Abstract –Taiwan is an island with various high mountains
created by tectonic plate collision where continent building is still
active with numerous earthquake activities. Taiwan is also in one
of the most prevalent monsoon and typhoon areas and they can
bring along heavy precipitation that produce great threat of mud
slide and land slide in the mountains. Remote mountain areas can
only rely on satellite monitoring before, during, and after heavy
rains where the optical monitoring satellites won’t be able to
provide the timely data or information. SAR satellites, with their
advantages of all-weather capability, repeat pass, fine spatial
resolution and wide swath, can provide coverage at disaster
locations in the island, disaster assessment and resource survey
provided the operating frequency to be lower enough as indicated
in the low cost C-band SAR satellite payload defined in this paper.
Based on the payload technology tradeoff analysis, the C-band
system with GaN SSPA power amplifier was selected by
comparing it with the X-band system with the TWTA technology
which was described in our early stage of mission definition and
analysis.