Advanced C-Band Instrument Based on Digital Beamforming

Inhalt:
An ESA study is reported regarding the potential application of Digital Beam Forming techniques in a future Cband SAR instrument. The advanced technology elements required on board are essentially concentrated in a tile of the proposed phased array antenna. The architecture of the advanced tile is presented and technology requirements are given. The study has shown that compared to a state-of-the-art C-band instrument such as Sentinel-1 the imaging performance of the instrument can be increased by 400% at the cost of requiring roughly 50% more resources.