Spaceborne Digital Beamforming on the Universal Processing Module

Abstract:
Digital Beamforming (DBF) in spaceborne SAR systems allows to break physical limits of the classical SAR architectures and increases swath width/resolution efficiency of the system by factors. A hardware enabler for implementation of on-board digital beamforming is the Universal Processing Module (UPM), which is a sophisticated high speed digital hardware for spaceborne microwave applications incorporating in one single device most of the functionalities of the digital backend. The critical components of the UPM (ADCs, DACs, FPGA etc.) and their performance are the forefront of what is feasible for space as of today, hence UPM is a cutting-edge performance device. Its high number of synchronised receive channel together with the high processing capabilities are an enabler for on-board digital beamforming and potential future applications requiring on-board feature extraction and consecutive autonomous adaptation of the spacecraft operation. The ESA ROSE-L mission which is utilising the Universal Processing Module is one of the first spaceborne digital beamforming implementations