Digital beam forming for C-Band SAR and technological elements

ESA has initiated several studies to enhance the performance of next generation of C-Band SAR. This paper provides an overview of the on-going demonstration activity for critical technology in C-band as required for a next generation Sentinel-1 SAR instrument with enhanced performance in terms of coverage and resolution. The new instrument will use digital beam forming (DBF) capabilities to achieve the performance improvement by a new combined analogue/digital beam forming unit called TRIM (Transmit/Receive Interface Module). The paper reports on the status of ongoing developments at subsystem level including required technological elements as European GaN and deep sub-micron silicon semiconductor technology.