A novel W-band digital variable polarimetric radar for target characteristic measurement is presented in this paper. The main components of the digital variable polarimetric radar are the two-subarrays variable polarized antenna, the two-channels T/R modules, and the digital signal processing unit. This radar transmits arbitrary polarized electromagnetic wave by spatial polarimetric synthesis, and receives arbitrary polarized echo by digital polarimetric synthesis. The experimental results illustrate that the W-band digital variable polarized measurement radar can extract the polarimetric scattering matrix accurately under various polarimetric modes, has the ability of measuring full-pol RCS of the target and can be used for target polarimetric information analyzing and research.