Development of a compact S-band SAR for earth resource monitoring

The design and development of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is one of the focused research areas in Malaysia since early 2000s. The main objective of this research is to develop an all-weather instrument for earth resource monitoring in Malaysia. The first SAR sensor developed was a C-band (5.3 GHz) SAR mounted on a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) [1]. In 2013, a new SAR sensor operating at S-band (3.125 GHz) frequency has been developed for earth resource monitoring. It is an enhanced version of the former C-band SAR sensor, with 1.5 m spatial resolution and onboard SAR processing capabilities. This paper presents the design and development of the new S-band SAR system and its preliminary test results for remote sensing applications.