Distributed synthetic aperture radar simulation

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) depends primarily on attainable frequency resolution rather than on large physical size of the antenna array. The distributed architecture concept (DSAR) incorporates active elements (amplifiers) at or near the elemental radiators of the array. Since SAR's are expensive to build and expensive to test, a computer modeling approach is a feasible method of predicting the quality or nature of the SAR image from the proposed system parameters. The goal of this project is to produce a DSAR simulation software package. This report describes the progress made thus far and the work which remains to be done. Extensive work on this project had been done previously by two NASA contractors. The principal task remaining involved the creation of a suitable interface between these programs and the hardware and software available at the Johnson Space Center.