Current situation and development trends of spaceborne SAR technology

Throughout the progress of spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology, it is switching from traditional specific technology breakthrough to concept and system innovation. Nowadays various application- oriented new systems and new models are emerging, which push forward the development of spaceborne SAR technology. This paper provides an introduction on the status of spaceborne SAR technology in Europe, the United States and other countries and discusses the trends of future spaceborne SAR technology. Emphases are laid on the development of spaceborne SAR technology for high-resolution wide-swath observation, multi-azimuth information acquisition, high-temporal information acquisition, 3-D terrain mapping and image quality improvement.