Development of an Airborne X-band APAA-SAR System

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is promising technique for high-resolution monitoring of the region of interests. We have already developed several SAR systems which based on L-band, Ku-band, X-band systems; however, these systems are without APAA because of its cost. In this time, we have developed airborne SAR system based on X-band active phased array antenna (APAA). The antenna subsystem is very small, furthermore, the electric unit which includes exciter/receiver/digital processor is also small. We have conducted a test flight at Nagoya city and demonstrated the effectiveness of the system.