Sparse phased array antenna for space-borne SAR

An effective and executable design procedure for equal amplitude excited sparse phased array for the application of Space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is presented. The procedure consists of three steps: 1) primary sparse array synthesis, 2) full wave simulation for active patterns extraction and 3) phase refinement for final results. The mutual coupling effects, which have not been widely discussed in the design of sparse array previously, are completely considered. Simulation results show that the proposed design procedure could fulfill typical pattern requirements of space-borne SAR antennas. A schematic design result of a sparse array SAR antenna is presented, which verifies the validity of proposed design procedure.