Performance of a Synthetic-Aperture Mapping Radar System

An ideal synthetic-aperture mapping radar system is postulated. The response of this system is then computed for 1) a point target, 2) locally homogeneous terrain, and 3) terrain of arbitrary reflectivity. Relationships for achievable resolution, swath width, and final map SNR vs the independent parameters of vehicle altitude, terrain scattering coefficient, carrier wavelength, vehicle velocity, and average radiated power are developed. The ideal system considered in this paper can be approximated in practice, for small real-antenna beamwidths, by using large time-bandwidth chirp waveforms and sin x/ x illumination of the real-antenna aperture.