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Smart antennas for space-borne synthetic aperture radars

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Abstract

This paper discusses smart antennas for space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR). First, some recent development in smart antennas for space-borne SAR is reviewed. Then, the paper presents a low-cost space-borne SAR system using digital beam forming on receive. The smart antenna system is also discussed, and some results are shown. The antenna system, consisting of a parabolic reflector and multi-feed array, is designed and optimized for dual-band dual-polarized digital beam-forming performance. The operating frequencies are at X and Ka bands with the center frequency of 9.6 and 35.75 GHz, respectively. The stacked dipoles and square patches with parasitic elements are employed as the feed elements at X and Ka bands. Dual-band antenna arrays are combined in the same aperture, which not only reduce the aperture of the feed array, but also coincide the center of dual-band feed arrays.

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Acknowledgments

This work is part of the project ‘DIFFERENT’ funded by EC FP7 (Grant Number: 6069923).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    F. Qin, S. Gao, C. Mao & Z. Wang

  2. Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Wessling, Germany

    A. Patyuchenko, M. Younis & G. Krieger

Authors
  1. F. Qin
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  2. S. Gao
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  3. C. Mao
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  4. Z. Wang
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  5. A. Patyuchenko
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  6. M. Younis
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  7. G. Krieger
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Correspondence to F. Qin.

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Qin, F., Gao, S., Mao, C. et al. Smart antennas for space-borne synthetic aperture radars. Appl. Phys. A 121, 1045–1051 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-015-9125-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-015-9125-0

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