Agile-beam synthetic aperture radar opportunities

The application of agile-beam (electronically steered) antennas to synthetic aperture radars (SARs) is examined. Agile-beam antennas are shown to provide significant advantages for SAR applications in which rapid search of wide areas is desired at high resolution. The analysis provides some useful insights into the operation of SARs and dispels a number of common misconceptions about the limitations of SARs.