Comparative Analysis of System Performance Between F-SCAN and DBF SARs

Frequency scanning (F-SCAN) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) offers unique advantages over digital beamforming (DBF) SAR for high-performance imaging. However, F-SCAN SAR introduces several new pitfalls, such as reduced effective average power, potential increase in data rate, and performance constrained by available bandwidth, which require more rigorous mathematical analysis. In this letter, we first introduce four performance ratios derived mathematically to compare the system performance between the two imaging techniques and then propose an optimization strategy for design of system parameters. Our analysis shows that F-SCAN SAR should not be considered a superior alternative for DBF SAR, but rather an important complement, as the former may result in degraded performance in specific scenarios. With a large available bandwidth, F-SCAN SAR would be well-suited for applications requiring very wide swaths with medium- to low-range resolutions.