THE RADARSAT SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR PAYLOAD

The Canadian RADARSAT Remote Sensing Satellite will employ a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument with a very flexible set of operating modes that include selectable swath widths, ground incidence angle and resolution. This SAR instrument will be able to alter its beam pointing angle to anywhere within a 500 km Earth ground track, with either a wide or narrow swath, at ground incidence angles from 20 to 49-degrees. Swath widths of 50, 100, 150 and 500 km will be available as standard configurations but the antenna pattern is reconfigurable in flight to enable other swath widths to be considered. In addition, the SAR instrument will be able to alter the across-track resolution. This paper describes the many design features of the baseline design of the RADARSAT SAR payload that provide the operating flexibility. The projected performance over the mission life will be described including the breadboard model development and performance predictions.