To provide a synthetic aperture radar for achieving a compact polarimetric SAR easily by using a general-purpose phased array antenna for vertical and horizontal polarizations. An antenna section is a phased array antenna for vertical and horizontal polarizations capable of switching to the vertical or horizontal polarizations in transmission at every transmission/reception module, and receiving two of the horizontal and vertical polarizations simultaneously. The control system divides electrically the phased array antenna in the elevation direction in transmission to set one of them for horizontal polarization transmission and the other for vertical polarization transmission, and sets the antenna for dual polarization simultaneous reception to receive the horizontal and vertical polarizations. The SAR processor takes complex data of horizontal and vertical polarization receiving data as a target vector, and obtains a calculation result corresponding to a covariance matrix of a target vector in full polarimetry so as to perform polarimetric SAR processing.