Pharos - A SAR concept to accelerate advanced exploitation

There has been a significant increase in the number of current or planned space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors over the last decade. Despite this, resolutions and exploitation capabilities have developed only relatively slowly. One reason for this may be the cost and availability of high fidelity, fine resolution imaging systems that can provide data in a scientifically convenient format to allow the scientific community to develop state-of-the art signal processing techniques and algorithms. Where such systems do exist their data characteristics are retained at a classified level in order to protect the capabilities and interests of the owning authority. This paper will present a new space-based SAR concept that is both affordable, will provide the scientific community with access to very high bandwidth, and experimental waveforms, whilst protecting the security concerns of any intelligence community. Challenges to be overcome and suggested solutions will be presented.