Polarimetric, combined, short pulse scatterometer-radiometer system at 5.6GHz

In this paper a C-band (~5.6 GHz), dual polarization, combined scatterometer-radiometer system is described. The system allows carry out polarimetric (vv, vh, hh, hv), simultaneous and coincident microwave active-passive measurements of the observed surface (soil, vegetation, snow and water surface) parameters. The originality of the developed system is in the spatial-temporal combination of microwave active and passive channels of observation and its possible application for short distance sensing (the minimum operational range for the scatterometer is ~6 m) from low altitude platforms under far field conditions for both radar and radiometric observations.