Development of Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar onboard UAV for Earth Diagnosis

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is well-known as a multi-purpose sensor that can be operated in all-weather and day-night time. Recently, many missions of SAR sensors are operated in linear polarization which sensitive to Faraday rotation effect etc. This paper introduces our Circularly Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar onboard Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (CP-SAR UAV) that is developed to retrieve the physical information of Earth surface for Earth diagnosis mission. The CP-SAR system is considered as small, light in weight and low power consumption system. The CP-SAR sensor is employing the elliptical wave propagation and scattering phenomenon by radiating and receiving the elliptically polarized wave, including the special polarization as circular and linear polarizations.