Concept of a multi-beam reflectarray digital-beam forming synthetic aperture radar

This paper presents a novel concept of a spaceborne Digital Beamforming (DBF) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) based on a multi-beam reflectarray antenna. The proposed solution offers a number of advantages compared to more conventional DBF SAR systems using planar arrays or reflector antennas. The paper focuses on the spaceborne DBF SAR architecture using a reflectarray antenna designed for the imaging platform. DBF SAR system parameters, an imaging scenario and a reflectarray antenna model are described in detail. The results of a performance analysis of the SAR system are presented and discussed in the paper.