An innovative spaceborne P-band SAR mission based on small satellites and formation flying technologies

This paper focuses on a new concept for spaceborne Pband
radar implementation, that is distributed Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR) based on formation flying. This
approach can in principle allow to overcome physical
constraints that limit the performance of monolithic
SARs, leading in the P-band case to huge antennas and
hard swath/resolution trade-offs. The proposed SAR is
based on a larger transmitting satellite and a set of
lightweight receiving-only platforms. This architecture
also allows for multi-mission capabilities. In particular,
in the P-band case forests observation and biomass
estimation can be combined with interferometric ice
sounding. Payload concept is clarified, mission analysis
and spacecraft design are described. The formation
control architecture is based on Global Navigation
Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, an Inter Satellite
Link (ISL) with Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) protocol, and
micro propulsion thrusters. Preliminary considerations
and numerical results on formation control are pointed
out.