Shared-Aperture Multi-Band Dual-Polarized SAR Microstrip Array Design

Since the 1970s, the remote sensing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems have been devel‐ oping increasingly. The SIR-C/X SAR mounted on the American Space Shuttle Endeavour firstly completed the high resolution 3D imaging all over the globe in Feb. 2000 [1]. It employs three dual-polarized sub-arrays operating at L-, Cand X-bands, respectively, as shown in Fig. 1[2]. The multi-band dual-polarized array receives more target information than that of a single-band one-polarization counterpart, and thus enhances the capability of target detection and identification. The common bands of space-borne SARs are L (center at 1.275 GHz), S (3.0 GHz), C (5.3 GHz) and X (9.6 GHz) bands. To minimize the volume and weight of a SAR antenna, a common aperture configuration for dual or multiple bands are expected, which will share the sub-systems behind the array as well. As a result, a lot of shared-aperture dual-band dual-polarization (DBDP) integrated planar antennas have been proposed in the last two decades [2].