Daily monitoring of the mediterranean sea by Geosynchronous SAR

RST was involved in studies on a Geosynchron-ous SAR for daily monitoring of large areas. In this study the feasibility of such a system was verified. The SAR is designed to cover the entire Mediterranean Sea once per day. The spatial resolution is with about 20m high enough in order to detect even small boats because the contrast between boats and ocean surface is typically strong enough. The design makes use of TOPS-SAR by Satellite rotation and SCAN-SAR by using multi-feed Parabolic Reflector Antenna as it is under development at European Space Agency ESA and European national space technology programs. This paper shows the design concept and an analysis on potential image quality. It demonstrated that such a system is possible based on today's technology.