High resolution SAR applications and instrument design

The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has viewed, in the last two years, a huge increment of interest from many preset and potential users. The good spatial resolution associated to the all weather capability lead to considering SAR not only a scientific instrument but a tool for verifying and controlling the daily human relationships with the Earth Environment. New missions were identified for SAR as spatial resolution became lower than three meters: disasters, pollution, ships traffic, volcanic eruptions, earthquake effect are only a few of the possible objects which can be effectively detected, controlled and monitored by SAR mounted on satellites. High resolution radar design constraints and dimensioning are discussed.