Conceptual design of near-space synthetic aperture radar for high-resolution and wide-swath imaging

Airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has the capability of high-resolution, and spaceborne SAR has the capability of wide-swath. Inspired by recent advances in near-space defined as the region between 20 km and 100 km, this paper conceptually designed near-space vehicle-borne SAR. The near-space vehicle-borne SAR has the synthetical advantages of the satellite and airplane platforms. By placing SAR transmitter or receiver in near-space vehicles, many functions that are currently performed with satellites or airplanes could be performed in low cost way. These advantages make simultaneous high-resolution and wide-swath SAR imaging possible. As such, this paper focuses on the role of near-space vehicle for high-resolution and wide-swath SAR imaging, and deals with conceptual performance, as opposed to technological implementation. The concepts, models and processing algorithms are provided. To further suppress the azimuth ambiguities and extend swath width, multiple beams in azimuth is applied. Furthermore, an example near-space vehicle-borne SAR is designed. It is shown that the use of cost effective near-space vehicles can provide the solutions that were previously thought to be out of reach for remote sensing scientists and customers.