PLIS : An airborne polarimetric L-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar

PLIS is an airborne synthetic aperture radar designed to be used in conjunction with a passive radiometer to collect microwave data at L-band for the remote sensing of soil moisture. The objective is to collect data to carry out a pre-deployment validation of algorithms for the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. Key features of the PLIS radar are described. The ground swath of PLIS is such that the incidence angle ranges from 15 degrees from nadir on the near side of the swath to 45 degrees on the far side, resulting in an almost 3:1 variation in ground range resolution across the swath. Initial investigations into the impact of this on the statistics of backscattered data are presented.