Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that employs multiple antennas to transmit orthogonal\r\nwaveforms and multiple antennas to receive radar echoes is a recently proposed remote sensing concept. It has been shown that\r\nMIMO SAR can be used to improve remote sensing system performance. Most of the MIMO SAR research so far focused on\r\nsignal/data models and corresponding signal processing algorithm. Little work related to MIMO SAR antenna analysis can be\r\nfound. One of the main advantages of MIMO SAR is that the degrees of freedom can be greatly increased by the concept of virtual\r\nantenna array. In this paper, we analyze the virtual antenna array for MIMO SAR high-resolution wide-swath remote sensing\r\napplications. The one-dimensional uniformand nonuniformlinear antenna arrays are investigated and their application potentials\r\nin high-resolution wide-swath remote sensing are introduced. The impacts of nonuniform spatial sampling in the virtual antenna\r\narray are analyzed, along with a multichannel filtering-based reconstruction algorithm. Conceptual system and discussions are\r\nprovided. It is shown that high operation flexibility and reconfigurability can be obtained by utilizing the virtual antenna arrays\r\nprovided by the MIMO SAR systems, thus enabling a satisfactory remote sensing performance.
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