It has been completed the research and development activity aimed at the implementation and testing of a multi-frequency radar system operating in the P-band (frequencies below 1 GHz), in particular in the VHF and UHF. The system is owned by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), made by the Consortium for Research on Advanced Remote Sensing Systems (CORISTA), and experimented with the participation of the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment of CNR, the Polytechnic of Milano and the University of Trento. It allows obtaining information on the sub-surface layer of the investigated area through the use of frequencies lower than those of the "classic" L, C and X-bands.
"The capability of the P-band radar to penetrate surfaces" state Gianfranco Fornaro and Francesco Soldovieri, IREA Senior Researchers who coordinated the activities of data processing and image generation including the one shown in Figure, "has relevant applications to safety, monitoring of forests, biomass and soil moisture estimation, as well as for the analysis of glaciers, for archeology, geology and planetary exploration".
The interest of the Defense towards the exploration of the potentialities offered by the military use of the P-band allowed us to carry out the radar testing through two flight campaigns with aircraft provided by the Aeronautica Militare. As part of the experiment, IREA led the data processing necessary to provide to the P-band radar the ability to discriminate the objects to the ground, with detail comparable to that of the human eye. The generation of P-band images requires a complex signal processing that, in the specific case of installation on a helicopter, concerned mainly the accurate compensation of the platform motion errors.