Distributed Spaceborne SAR: A review of systems, applications, and the road ahead

作者：Cheng Hu, Yuanhao Li, Zhiyang Chen, Feifeng Liu, Qingjun Zhang, Andrea Monti Guarnieri, Stephen Hobbs, Andrei Anghel, Mihai Datcu · 发表于：IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1109/mgrs.2025.3535412 · 被引用次数：14 · 研究领域：Space Satellite Systems and Control、Satellite Communication Systems

As a crucial sensor for wide-area Earth observation, Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) plays a pivotal role in large-scale terrain mapping, ocean observation, disaster monitoring, etc. Driven by the increasing demands for diverse applications, enhanced performance, and the continuous advancement of satellite and radar technologies, the distributed configuration has emerged as a key developmental trend for spaceborne SAR. This review comprehensively summarizes the systems and typical applications of distributed spaceborne SAR. The system configurations encompass homogenous distributed SAR, formed by multiple identical or similar platforms, and heterogeneous distributed SAR, characterized by significant differences between the transmitting and receiving platforms. Typical applications of distributed SAR include intelligent target recognition, terrain mapping, deformation retrieval, atmosphere measurement, ocean observation, among others. Finally, the review offers a prospective outlook on the future development of distributed spaceborne SAR.