Data acquisition for a novel spaceborne azimuth-range sweep synthetic aperture radar

The application of the spaceborne stripmap range sweep synthetic aperture radar (SS-RSSAR) is limited by its fixed azimuth beam pointing. In this paper a more advanced spaceborne azimuth-range sweep synthetic aperture radar (ARSSAR) is proposed to illuminate the region of interest (ROI) by simultaneously sweeping the beam in range and in azimuth. In this case, more balances of the azimuth resolution and the azimuth swath can be flexibly realized. The basic data acquisition problem for the spaceborne ARSSAR is analyzed from two aspects: firstly, an optimized beam illumination strategy is achieved by minimizing the width of the echoes from the ROI-strip; secondly, a continuous varying pulse interval (CVPI) method is suggested to avoid the transmission blockage and maximize the allowable width of the ROI-strip. The presented approach is evaluated by the simulations.