Hardware performance of L-band SAR system onboard ALOS-2

Land Observation Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) is a space borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system, , which is the follow-on L-SAR satellite mission of ALOS. Compared to the previous mission ALOS/PALSAR, the new L-band SAR system is capable of achieving both high resolution (down to lm) and wide swath (up to 500km), with an improved image quality. The hardware (H/W) of ALOS-2, including L-band SAR sensor, is developed by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation under the contract of Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA). This paper describes the H/W design and performance of the ALOS-2 SAR sensor with a focus on the engineering model (EM) test performance.