Development Of Next Generation Digital Beamforming Synthetic Aperture Radar Architectures

Next Generation Digital Beamforming (DBF) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a technological area being pursued at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Two such systems - BSAR-2 and EcoSAR-have been recently developed and tested. The new instruments employ advanced architectures characterized by multi-mode operation, software defined waveform generation, digital beamforming, and configurable radar parameters. The instruments have been developed to support several disciplines in Earth and Planetary sciences. This paper will describe EcoSAR and DBSAR-2 advanced features and report on the latest SAR processing and calibration efforts.