Elevated Frequency Diversity Array: A Novel Approach to High Resolution and Wide Swath Imaging for Synthetic Aperture Radar

In this letter, we examine a new measure for high resolution and wide swath (HRWS) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging based on an elevated frequency diversity array (EFDA). By highly integrating digital beamforming (DBF) and frequency diversity array (FDA) techniques, EFDA–SAR achieves range ambiguity resolution in the spatial frequency domain and range ambiguity suppression outside the observed swath in the range space domain. Moreover, the EFDA–SAR system improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to its elevated antenna array design. A model is developed for the time-varying filtering of this novel EFDA-SAR system design. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed design. Using EFDA–SAR, we can obtain an HRWS SAR image without range ambiguity from the observed swath or outside it. Moreover, by combining DBF on reception, the SNR of the EFDA-SAR image is significantly improved.