Description of RADARSAT-2 synthetic aperture radar design

This article is one in a series of articles describing the RADARSAT-2 program and is intended to give readers a top-level description of the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload design and performance. RADARSAT-2 is Canada's second SAR earth observation satellite. It will satisfy all the imaging needs of RADARSAT-1 users and provide additional advanced imaging capabilities. EMS Technologies (Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que.) is responsible for the design and construction of the payload, including the C-band SAR system. The SAR contains sophisticated electronics that feed a state-of-the-art distributed active phased-array antenna consisting of 512 transmit/receive modules (TRMs) with radio frequency (RF) and power distribution networks. Each TRM feeds a dual-polarization patch radiated subarray. This provides increased flexibility and capability over other commercial SAR remote sensing satellites. Thus, RADARSAT-2 will offer high quality products, including selectable polarization and fully polarimetric data, ultra-fine images with spatial resolution of 3 m, and a moving object detection experiment (MODEX) imaging mode.