Analysis of an antenna system design for a synthetic L- and P-band aperture radar

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of options for designs of the antenna system for a synthetic aperture space radar (SAR), with acceptable performance characteristics in L- and P-bands. At the first stage the analysis of the current state of producing spacecraft with L- and P-band radars that use quite large folding antenna structures is carried out. It is shown that to obtain high performance of SAR in L- and P-band large folding reflectors with the diameter of up to15 meters are used. Further, variants of antenna systems are discussed and compared to determine the best combination in terms of the characteristics obtained and design complexity. An antenna system is proposed in the paper that uses antennae of the Yagi-aerial type as antenna array elements. The possibility of creating a space system consisting of several unified small spacecraft with L- and P-band SAR on board is shown.

Keywords

• synthetic aperture radar (sar)
• p-band
• l-band
• small satellite