The Terrasar-X Antenna System

TerraSAR-X is a space borne high resolution imaging synthetic aperture system, based on advanced active phased array technology. The paper presents an overview of the TerraSAR-X frontend and discusses the strategy for antenna testing, verification and in-orbit pattern prediction. As an integral part of this approach, an antenna model has been developed which allows, on the basis of embedded subarray measurements, the calculation of the overall antenna pattern for a given gain/phase setting of the T/R-modules.