Spaceborne SAR Terrain Matching Curved Imaging with Beam Steering in Range

Abstract:
The swath of the conventional spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is parallel-to-orbit, leading to the incomplete coverage of the long curved terrains. Spaceborne SAR Terrain Matching Curved (TMC) imaging is a promising approach to solve the problem of observing the long curved terrains. It continuously tracks the orientations of the long curved terrains with continuous beam steering and hence the TMC swath matches with the long curved terrains. This paper demonstrates spaceborne SAR TMC imaging with beam steering in range on the Chinese LJ2-01 satellite. A TMC swath of 248.3 km is imaged with an azimuth resolution of around 1.4 m.