KAPRI: a Bistatic Full-Polarimetric Interferometric Real-Aperture Radar System for Monitoring of Natural Environements

In this submission the bistatic operation mode of KAPRI, a polarimetric-interferometric, ground-based, real-aperture, Ku-band, FMCW radar is presented. Its possible configurations and the synchronization procedures needed to achieve distortion-free single-look complex bistatic images are described. The challenges of polarimetric calibration in the bistatic regime are outlined, and a novel active calibration device and the associated polarimetric calibration method which are used for bistatic calibration of KAPRI are presented. First results of observations of natural environments (vegetation, snow) using bistatic KAPRI are shown.