Synthetic aperture imaging airborne radar

Airborne synthetic aperture radars are systems able to obtain high resolution ground images, by day or night, independent of weather conditions. Their applications are very broad, both military (reconnaissance), and civilian (mapping, remote sensing). Following a brief technical account (synthetic aperture, pulse compression), the paper describes the operational features of an airborne radar system providing high resolution images at long range. Then, a technical description is given. This system can provide in real time, to the ground, radar images by using a high rate data link. It consists of two main parts: (1) An airborne part including the antenna, the radar transmitter-receiver, and the data link unit; and (2) a ground station that realizes, in real time, data reception, synthetic aperture processing, and image exploitation.