Modular Radar Core for airborne and space applications

The development of Radar Core electronics for any airand spaceborne radar units has a long space heritage at EADS in Friedrichshafen. It encompasses the spaceborne radars SIR-C/ X-SAR, SRTM, TerraSAR-X, TanDEMX, and the oncoming PAZ mission and many airborne missions. These missions demonstrated successfully the high end radar electronics performances. EADS initiated a product development program called SmartRadar (Scalable modular aerospace radar technology) for the next generation airborne and space radars. The Radar Core development is one step in the SmartRadar development road map at EADS. To summarise the status of the development: the new hardware and related software have been flown in a demonstration flight campaign in summer 2009. For this campaign the frequency band was chosen to be at XBand to use an available Reflector Antenna and Travelling Wave Tube Amplifier (TWTA) and Front end equipment. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image results are of very good quality and performance parameters analysed from the recorded raw data match or exceed the chosen design parameters.