Design of Passive Non-Cooperative Spaceborne SAR Payloads – Challenges and Strategies

Inhalt:
This paper addresses significant challenges in the design of passive non-cooperative spaceborne SAR payloads. In particular, we cover time and phase synchronisation, beam/spectral overlap, and payload implementation aspects of the next generation of companion satellites. Our analysis has been illustrated with examples from proposed passive missions, e.g. SAOCOM and Sentinel-1 companion satellites, that have been and are currently being analysed by Airbus Defence & Space in the context of different ESA studies.