Advanced ScanSAR Capabilities Enabled by Optimized Antenna Array Azimuth Radiation Patterns: the ROSE-L Case Study.

In the future ROSE-L mission, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the Copernicus Expansion Programme, different advanced acquisition techniques will be simultaneously experienced, namely, ScanSAR, Scan On Receive and Digital Beam Forming on receive. This work shows that additional ScanSAR capabilities with respect to those achievable through the current ROSE-L system design may be enabled through proper shaping of the azimuth pattern of the TX radar antenna. In particular, we show that without upsetting the current system architecture, and properly acting only on the distribution of the input excitations of the elements of the currently designed TX array antenna, we can obtain a significant mitigation of the scalloping effect and/or move from a single azimuth look ScanSAR configuration to a more attractive two-look one.