The evolutionary optimisation of shaped and minimum sidelobe radiation patterns for synthetic aperture radars

This paper presents a technique of optimising the aperture excitations of a N-element linear array of radiating elements for a spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), given a required far-field beam shape template. This method uses evolutionary or genetic algorithms to search and locate the best solution to the problem. It outlines how this technique may be applied to different types of space based SAR arrays and the various complications that are encompassed within the optimisation problem due to the real space scenario.