X-Band Demonstrator for Receive-only Frontend with Digital Beamforming

Conference: EUSAR 2010 - 8th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
06/07/2010 - 06/10/2010 at Aachen, Germany

Proceedings: EUSAR 2010

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

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Authors:
Schaefer, Christoph; Heer, Christoph (Astrium GmbH, Germany)
Ludwig, Michael (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)

Abstract:
A technology demonstration has shown feasibility of the scan-on-receive (SCORE) principle in X-band, required for future High-Resolution Wide-Swath (HRWS) SAR instruments. Under ESA contract, a hardware demonstrator has been designed, built and tested. The 5-channel demonstrator features homodyne downconversion, early digitization, and digital beamforming (DBF). Digital beamforming is performed in real-time and has successfully been demonstrated in the anechoic chamber. Achieved performances are reported, including receive chain noise figure, SNR beamforming gain and DC power consumption.