Design of a light–weight digital beam forming antenna for future sar applications

The CSA has been working actively during the past decade on developing various technologies for improving the capabilities of SAR antennas. Various techniques have been investigated for decreasing the mass per unit of area as well as improving the electronic capabilities of the radar. These efforts were combined to form a new concept that is presented here. The concept was defined for C-band applications but could also be applied at lower frequency. The radar antenna has a total area of 38 m². The central aperture (~10 m²) is used on transmit and receive while the wings are receive only phased arrays spanning a total area of 28 m². The central aperture transmits a large beam and the receive aperture captures the echo simultaneously from various directions through a digital beam synthesis.