Alaska Satellite Facility - Distributed Active Archive Center

UAVSAR

Modified NASA Gulfstream III in early flight tests with the UAVSAR pod attached to the underside of the aircraft (image credit: NASA/DFRC)

Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-built reconfigurable, polarimetric L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), is specifically designed to acquire airborne repeat-track SAR data for differential interferometric measurements.

The radar is designed to be operable on a UAV (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle) but will initially be demonstrated on a NASA Gulfstream III. The radar is fully polarimetric, with a range bandwidth of 80 MHz (2-m range resolution) and a range swath greater than 16 km.

Open access — no proposal is required.

Data Products

Dataset Description:

  • Airborne SAR — synthetic aperture radar
  • 2008-present
  • Locations: portions of North America; Greenland; Iceland; and North, Central, and South America
  • Polarimetric L-band and interferometric products 

Downloadable Products:

  • PolSAR — polarimetric SAR
    • MLC, Compressed Stokes Matrix, Ground Projected Complex, Pauli Decomposition
  • RPI — repeat pass interferometry
    • Interferogram, Ground Projected Interferogram, Amplitude, Ground Projected Amplitude

More information is available at the JPL UAVSAR website.

Coverage Maps

UAVSAR Technical Specs

Frequency L-band
Polarization Full
Resolution (range) 1.8 m
Swath Width 16 km

How to Cite Data

Cite data in publications such as journal papers, articles, presentations, posters, and websites. Please send copies of, or links to, published works citing data, imagery, or tools accessed through ASF to [email protected] with “New Publication” on subject line.

Format Example
Dataset: UAVSAR, NASA [year of data acquisition]. Retrieved from ASF DAAC [day month year of data access]. Dataset: UAVSAR, NASA 2011. Retrieved from ASF DAAC 7 June 2015.

How to Cite Imagery

Include credit with each image shown in publications such as journal papers, articles, presentations, posters, and websites. (NASA does not copyright imagery.)

Format Example
NASA [year of data acquisition] NASA 2003

UAVSAR Datasets and DOIs

Dataset DOI
UAVSAR_POLSAR 10.5067/7PEQV8SVR4DM
UAVSAR_RPI 10.5067/R0ARICRBAKYE