An Iso-Frequency MIMO SAR Formation for Wide-Swath Imaging, Interferometry and Tomography

The paper proposes a close formation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites that are simultaneously transmitting and receiving, in a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) configurations. The received signals can be jointly processed to form a single SAR image with a power gain proportional to the squared number of sensors, or to upsample a low PRF, enabling wide coverage, or finally to retrieve a 3D complex reflectivity, in vertical layers, by a tomographic MIMO configuration. Evaluation of performance and limitations has been carried out in the three cases by running full 2D simulations and focusing.