Concepts for SAR Systems with Photonic Beamforming

In recent years there has been an increasing demand on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems in terms of mapping capability and imaging performance. As a result many new techniques using digital beamforming (DBF) have been developed. These techniques include scan-on-receive (SCORE), dispersive SAR, multi-beam SCORE, and f-scan mode. However, DBF has several disadvantages and as an alternative, photonic beamforming (PBF) is currently being proposed as a solution to future SAR systems. This paper gives an overview of PBF benefits and drawbacks and possible architectures with their potential application to modern SAR techniques. Ideas and plans for potential future research is discussed including a SAR ground demonstrator and performance evaluation tools for implementing MWP subsystems in SAR.