DBSAR's First Multimode Flight Campaign

The Digital Beamforming SAR (DBSAR) is an airborne imaging radar system that combines phased array technology, reconfigurable on-board processing and waveform generation, and advances in signal processing to enable techniques not possible with conventional SARs. The system exploits the versatility inherently in phased-array technology with a state-of-the-art data acquisition and real-time processor in order to implement multi-mode measurement techniques in a single radar system. Operational modes include scatterometry over multiple antenna beams, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) over several antenna beams, or Altimetry. The radar was flight tested in October 2008 on board of the NASA P3 aircraft over the Delmarva Peninsula, MD. The results from the DBSAR system performance is presented.