SUB-Y-TYPE ANTENNA ARRAY CONFIGURATION FOR HIGH RESOLUTION INTERFEROMETRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADIOMETER

The development of 2-D radiometer is a new technical challenge for space borne remote sensing area. The Y-type antenna array has been proposed as a most efficient configuration because a large alias free FOV and a small-synthesized beam-width can be achieved compared to L-, T-type under the fixed antenna spacing. New configuration of antenna array, which is called sub-Y type configuration, is proposed to obtain a higher angular resolution than the case of Y-type array in the paper. The sub-Y type array is consisted of basic arrays, which are the Y-type array of four antenna elements. To analyze characteristics of the proposed configuration, the synthesized beam pattern is simulated through simulation. The secondary effect of the sub-Y-type is that the reconstructed image is suffered from the alias effect is appeared around the real target. The ghost targets in the reconstructed image can be reduced by the alias suppression algorithm introduced in this paper. In conclusion, the performance evaluation by use of array factor simulation shows more than 37.5% improvement in average for angular resolution and almost similar performance for temperature resolution.