A Polarization Calibration Solution Method of Airborne SAR Based on Point Target

Polarization calibration is a necessary prerequisite for quantitative analysis and application of polarized synthetic aperture radar images. The polarization calibration method based on point target has the characteristics that the model is relatively simple and easy to understand. However, the existing point target polarization calibration method has the problem of relatively poor stability and accuracy. In this paper, a polarization calibration optimization method combining genetic algorithm and Levenberg–Marquard method is proposed. The genetic algorithm solution result is taken as the initial value into the Levenberg–Marquard method to obtain more accurate polarization distortion parameters. Experiments with airborne X-band polarization synthetic aperture radar images show that the proposed method has higher calibration accuracy than the classic Whitt algorithm and unconstrained algorithm, and can obtain more accurate and stable calibration results.