"Looking forward (and backward): TOPSAR"

Worldwide intersts and investments in remote sensing technologies have been constantly growing for the last two decades. Space based technologies in particular, including cutting-edge techniques like space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR), are following the trend. Nowadays we are assisting to a worldwide proliferation of new SAR missions that require a continuos research effort to cope with the increasing demand of high quality SAR products. ARESYS since the very beginning of its experience, has been involved in the definition and design of some of the most innovative SAR missions at an international level.

Sentinel-1 is the future C-Band ESA SAR constellation aimed at providing an all-weather day-and-night supply of imagery for all the SAR data users and SAR-based application providers. The first Sentinel-1 satellite is envisaged to launch in 2012 and will be followed by the second satellite a few years later. ARESYS, together with its natural partner Politecnico di Milano, has been involved in the mission design since the early phases. In this framework it contributed to the conception of TOPSAR, an innovative acquisition mode, based on a time-varying pointing of the antenna beam (from backward to forward with respect to the sattelite motion), that shall be implemented for the first time on the Sentinel-1 constellation.