The TechSat21 space-based radar employs a cluster of free-floating satellites, each of which transmits its own orthogonal signal and receives all reflected signals. The satellites operate coherently at X-band. The cluster forms essentially a multi-element interferometer with a concomitant large number of grating lobes and significant ground clutter. A novel technique for pattern synthesis in angle-frequency space with thinned arrays, combined with reduced order space-time processing, was presented by us at the 2001 IEEE Aerospace Conference, along with some preliminary results. We now give a full evaluation of this technique and its effectiveness in clutter suppression.
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