On a Possible SAR Interferometric Phase Error Associated with the Scan-On-Receive Digital Beamforming

Inhalt:
Scan-on-receive is a key digital beamforming technique for future high-resolution wide-swath synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. A sharp and high gain receive beam, steered towards the expected direction of arrival of the backscattering signal, allows to improve the SAR imaging performance, compared to a conventional approach. Nevertheless, it also exposes the system to new errors. A recent analysis has highlighted the relevant effect of terrain height variations and pulse duration on the SAR image radiometric quality, in view of the demanding requirements of future SAR products. This paper investigates a possible effect on the interferometric SAR performance.