Multistatic Dispersed Swarm Configurations for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging

The letter proposes a systematic derivation and description of dispersed synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for uniform intersatellite separation, points out some of its major challenges, that is, gapless sampling and power consumption, and provides solutions for them. Using a reference stripmap scenario, the improvements introduced by dispersed SAR using either fixed or alternating transmit satellites are discussed. It is shown that dispersed configurations allow for both a transmit power suited for small satellites and safe intersatellite separations.