System Performance and Flight Model Evaluation of Palsar-3 Onboard Alos-4

Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Ra-dar-3 (PALSAR-3) onboard Advanced Land Observing Satellite-4 (ALOS-4) is a spaceborne L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system. ALOS-4 is capable of achieving high resolution (3m) with 4 times wider swath width compared to ALOS-2. Hardware design and implementation of SAR techniques, namely digital beamforming (DBF) in the elevation direction and multiple transmit channel (MTC), enables high-resolution wide-swath observation. Data acquired by ALOS-4 requires specific signal processing techniques such as azimuth multi-beamforming and sub-band phase correction for high resolution wide swath image production. The flight model of PALSAR-3 system has been integrated and final test evaluation is expected to finish by the middle of 2021.