A Concept for High Performance Reflector-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract

The success of current spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is boosting the performance requirement of next generation systems. In order to cope with the evolution of SAR, the design of the new systems will need to meet higher requirements for spacial and radiometric resolutions together with an increased availability. This tendency is recognized nearly independently of the application area and manifests itself through several study programs from different space agencies aiming at the design of future SAR systems. In this context the use of large reflectors combined with digital feed arrays for SAR is a highly attractive concept. This paper suggests a spaceborne SAR system utilizing a a deployable reflector together with a digital feed array and elaborates into the various design and operation issues together with the resulting instrument SAR performance.