Radiation Characteristics of a SAR Antenna Panel of ERS-1 Determined from Planar Near-Field Measurements

Planar near-field measurements were carried out on a single panel of the engineering model (EM) of the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) antenna of the European Remote Sensing satellite ERS-1. The radiation behaviour was determined before and after exposure of the panel to a number of thermal cycles in vacuum. Transformation of measured near-field data back to the aperture plane has been exploited for antenna diagnostics to study anomalies found in the aperture distribution.