Heliradar - a synthetic aperture radar with rotating antennas

Nowadays available radar instruments are not capable to guide a helicopter pilot safely during approach and landing under poor visibility conditions. This is due to lack of resolution and lack of elevation (height) information. The basic technology that could be used to improve the radar significantly is the ROSAR technology, a synthetic aperture radar based on rotating antennas. On the basis of encouraging research work on the ROSAR technology, Eurocopter Deutschland (ECD) started in 1992 a research program to investigate the feasibility of a ROSAR based imaging radar: HeliRadar. The objective of HeliRadar is to provide a photolike image whose resolution is good enough to safely guide a pilot under poor visibility conditions to the target destination.