S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar On-Board Nisar Satellite

In order to cater to science and applications requirements S Band SAR (on-board NISAR) has been configured to provide single, dual, compact and quasi-quad polarization imaging modes. Centre frequency for S-band SAR is 3200MHz with highest bandwidth of 75MHz. S-Band SAR utilizes 24 transmit receive modules (T/R Modules) to illuminate >240kms swath during transmit event and digital beam forming (DBF) on receive to reduce data rate by combining 24 receive channels and enhance SNR of the system. This paper provides details of S-band SAR system design, configuration and realization which is a challenging task since both L-band and S-band radars need to operate at same PRF and clock reference during simultaneous imaging operation. Further to this, SweepSAR technique demands PRF dithering (changing) to avoid dead gaps in the swath due to receive echo conflicting with transmit event.