China’s first millimeter wave three-baseline InSAR prototype has been successfully developed in the National Key Laboratory of Microwave Imaging Technology in Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS). The prototype is the fruit of “Key Technology in Airborne Millimeter Wave Three-Baseline Cross-Track InSAR” task in the subject of new remote sensing technologies in earth observation and navigation, which is part of the “863 Program” (National High-tech R&D Program of China) in China’s 11th Five-Year Plan.

InSAR is the abbreviation for  Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar technology. The new observation technology from the space to the earth, which uses the two SAR pictures of the same place as the basic handling data to get the interfering pictures via calculating the phase difference of the two SAR pictures, getting the terrain elevation data of interfering stripe after phase unwrapping.

The millimeter wave cross-track InSAR prototype is provided with three baselines and employs an optical remote sensing equipment stabilization platform. Compared with the short-range multi-baseline millimeter wave InSAR developed by Germany and the single-baseline millimeter wave InSAR developed by JPL in the USA, the middle-/low-altitude flight platform-based overall design and technological solution of this prototype presents certain advancement.

Meanwhile, the InISAR imaging tests against moving objects both in the air and on the ground by using this prototype have achieved satisfactory technological level and image quality, and are of great importance to the development of advanced SAR and InSAR system.