Patent ID: 7825847

Claim:
A synthetic aperture radar comprising: an antenna section; an electric circuit section including a control system; an SAR image reproducer; and a compact polarimetric SAR processor; wherein the antenna section is a phased array antenna for vertical and horizontal polarizations capable of switching to the horizontal polarization or the vertical polarization in transmission at every transmission/reception module, and for receiving the horizontal polarization and the vertical polarization simultaneously, the control system divides electrically an antenna surface of the phased array antenna at a time of transmission to set one of antenna surfaces for horizontal polarization transmission and the other of antenna surfaces for vertical polarization transmission, and, at a time of reception, sets the antenna surface for dual polarization simultaneous reception to receive the horizontal polarization and the vertical polarization in reception, and the compact polarimetric SAR processor takes complex data of horizontal polarization receiving data and vertical polarization receiving data, which are transmitted and received by the antenna section and the electric circuit section and imaged respectively by the SAR image reproducer, as a target vector, and obtains a calculation result corresponding to a covariance matrix of a target vector in full polarimetry so as to perform a compact polarimetric SAR processing, wherein the control system sets a phase of the transmission/reception module in the phased array antenna to a phase required for control of beam directivity so as to control 45 degrees linear polarization transmission.