The KaSAR airborne campaign

In 2012, a large airborne campaign dedicated to radar backscattering measurements over natural surfaces has been undertaken by ONERA. This campaign, KaSAR, was funded by ESA in the frame of the Living Planet Program. Different surface types have been addressed, such as water surfaces (lakes and sea), continental surfaces (agricultural areas, forests, bare surfaces) and coastal zones. The DRIVE Ka band SAR payload was installed on board the ONERA BUSARD platform.. A large Ka band radar dataset has been processed, leading to backscattering measurements that have been synthesized into a sigma0 data base. Results from this campaign are now available to compare with published values and to validate simulations.