Experimental study of thinned array antennas by means of synthetic aperture radar measurements

The performance of large, highly thinned array antenna configurations are investigated in view of surface imaging radar applications. The suitability of a spatial tapering method, of a fractal structure and of a combinatorial algorithm for processing (focussing) radar data is evaluated. To this end, fully vectorial information, obtained from histatic, synthetic aperture measurements performed with a stepped frequency radar, is employed. The images generated with sparse configurations show attractive features even for large thinning rates of up to 75%.