The "Myth" of the minimum SAR antenna area constraint

Abstract

A design constraint traceable to the early days of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is known as the minimum antenna area constraint for SAR. In this paper, it is confirmed that this constraint strictly applies only to the case in which both the best possible resolution and the widest possible swath are the design goals. SAR antennas with area smaller than the constraint allows are shown to be possible, have been used on spaceborne SAR missions in the past, and should permit further, lower-cost SAR missions in the future.