Synthetic thinned aperture radiometry (STAR) is a method of radar in which the coherent product (correlation) of the signal from pairs of antennas is measured at different antenna-pair spacings (baselines).
[2] The reconstructed image includes all of the pixels in the entire field-of-view of the antennas.
The main advantage of the STAR architecture is that it requires no mechanical scanning of an antenna.
Furthermore, aperture thinning reduces the overall volume and mass of the antenna system.
A disadvantage is the reduction of radiometric sensitivity (or increase in rms noise) of the image due to a decrease in signal-to-noise ratio for each measurement compared to a filled aperture.