Analysis on Performance of SAR System Affected by Digital Beam Forming in Elevation

Digital Beam Forming (DBF) in elevation is regarded as an important candidate for high resolution and wide coverage imaging SAR system, since it can enhance the performance of SAR system by forming a high gain and sharp beam pattern to receive the pulse echoes. This paper is based on range DBF for wide-swath SAR system, and analyzes particularly on performance of SAR system affected by DBF in elevation. The expressions of Noise Equivalent Sigma Zero (NESZ) and Range Ambiguity to Signal Ratio (RASR) for the range DBF-SAR system are derived in detail. In order to suppress the range ambiguity energy, the null-steering technology is introduced. All the simulation results validate the advantages of range DBF-SAR system compared with the conventional single channel system.