Pattern synthesis for TechSat21 - a distributed space-based radar system

The TechSat21 space-based radar employs a cluster of free-floating satellites, each of which transmits its own orthogonal signal and receives all reflected signals. The satellites operate coherently at the X band. The cluster forms essentially a multielement interferometer, with a concomitantly large number of grating lobes and significant ground clutter. A novel technique for pattern synthesis in angle-frequency space is proposed, which exploits the double periodicities of the grating lobes in the angular domain and of the radar pulses in the frequency domain, and allows substantial gains in clutter suppression. Gains from 7 to 17 dB relative to the normal random, sparse array appear feasible.