Paper
21 June 2011 Optimal antenna beamwidth for stripmap SAR
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Abstract
The classical rule-of-thumb for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is that a uniformly illuminated antenna aperture may allow continuous stripmap imaging to a resolution of half its azimuth dimension. This is applied to classical line-by-line processing as well as mosaicked image patches, that is, a stripmap formed from mosaicked spotlight images; often the more efficient technique often used in real-time systems. However, as with all rules-of-thumb, a close inspection reveals some flaws. In particular, with mosaicked patches there is significant Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) degradation at the edges of the patches due to antenna beam roll-off. We present in this paper a calculation for the optimum antenna beamwidth as a function of resolution that maximizes SNR at patch edges. This leads to a wider desired beamwidth than the classical calculation.
© (2011) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
A. W. Doerry "Optimal antenna beamwidth for stripmap SAR", Proc. SPIE 8021, Radar Sensor Technology XV, 80211Q (21 June 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.883098
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KEYWORDS
Antennas

Synthetic aperture radar

Signal to noise ratio

Image processing

Image resolution

Ku band

Radar imaging

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