Closed Form Calibration of 1bit/2level Correlator Used for Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radiometer

A Ka-band two-dimensional synthetic aperture interferometric radiometer called BHU-2D has been developed by Electromagnetic Engineering Laboratory of Beihang University. The radiometer obtains images in real-time benefiting from the adoption of a 1bit/2level FPGA-based correlator unit. The design and implementation of the correlator unit in BHU-2D are presented in this paper. The calibration procedures of the correlation coefficients are also presented. For the purpose of simplifying the calibration procedure, a closed form approximation is introduced and applied to BHU-2D, which is used to correct the errors caused by threshold offset of the quantizer. Error analysis of this approximation shows that the method is applicable in SAIRs. In order to verify the design and calibration method, a series of validation experiments have been conducted. Measurement results have proved that the performance of the correlation unit could meet the requirements of BHU-2D.