The new ONERA multispectral airborne SAR system in 2009

This paper provides an overview of the new airborne SAR system developed by the French Aerospace Lab ONERA over the last three years. This system, called SETHI, was developed according to the standard FAR25 applied to civil application. The main improvement compared to the previous ONERA airborne radar system RAMSES is that the antennas are located in two pods compatible with small aircrafts like the Falcon 20. This pod-based configuration allows the easy integration of any kind of payloads under the single certification of the pods by authorities. In the first section a quick introduction presents the aircraft configuration (cabin and pods) with an overview of SETHI development. The second section describes the SETHI concept with the installation on board the falcon 20 cabin, the hardware development to control and command all ONERA racks, the pods with their control and command systems. A new component is being added to the system . It is a UHF/VHF radar with a frequency ranging from 225 MHz to 455 MHz. This new system will be tested in December 2008 in Southern France. The last section illustrates the validation campaign and will be updated in the final version of the paper to include results associated with the 2009 campaign, especially the low frequency component.