A real aperture radar for low resolution mapping at low costs

This paper briefly describes the results obtained in the course of the trade-off analysis activity of low cost scatterometers based on real aperture measurement. This has been carried out at Alenia Aerospazio-Space Division in the frame of internal research activities and of the European Space Agency (ESA) "Modest Resolution Radar for Radar/Radiometer Applications" contract. The idea of low resolution radar operating in scatter mode is not recent. Some years ago ESA proposed to analyse the synergism between scatterometers and radiometers in order the achieve a more complete mission for environmental application and sea temperature surveillance. From this consideration ESA generated an ITT on "Modest Resolution Radars" suitable for a synergetic employment on a devoted mission with a radiometer very similar to MIMR (Multi Frequency Microwave Radiometer). Alenia Aerospazio, together with the Canadian MPB Technology and British ESYS, have developed research work in order to disclose new instrument concepts such to fit as much as possible the requirement imposed by the world scientific community. The paper describes some concepts presenting them in terms of measurement principle, theoretical performance and estimated cost/weight.