New Generation Of Italian SAR

During 1990 the Italian Space Agency (ASI) commissioned to Alenia Spazio (ALS) a study to identif) requirement and to investigate the feasibility of a new generation space-based SAR. The scope is both to prepare the Italian space industry for future international cooperation in SAR development and to developanItalian programin remote sensingsatellites. When the work started the first step was the analysis of present and next future SARs. So ERS-1 AMI, RADARSAT, SIR-C, EOS-SAR are the references to which compare this work to find similarities and differences. This paper is just a summary of the whole study. ALS main tasks were the definition of a first set of requirement at system and subsystem level to incorporate the new operative modes (spotlight and wideswath), and the system design methodologies. The new generation SAR will be based on an active antenna, another important element is the digital chirp generator by which it is possible to adapt the signal bandwidth to the operation mode. The main requirement and operative modes, with SAR block diagram and H/W implemencative aspects will be presented.