Design of array for airborne forward looking SAR based on compressed sensing

In the airborne forward looking SAR (FL-SAR), there were a list of antennas along the wing of airplane, which were used to achieve two-dimensional resolution image of scene front the airplane. In order to reduce cost of airborne FL-SAR, it is necessary to cut down quantity of antennas. In this paper, combining the compressed sensing theory, a design method for sparse array was put forward based on principle of airborne FL-SAR imaging. The method can cut down the quantity of antennas effectively, and also can reduce the burden for data transmission and storage in the airborne FL-SAR observation. Theoretic analysis and simulation verified the validity for the array design.