The invention discloses a small FMCW-based (frequency modulated continuous wave) SAR (synthetic aperture radar) imaging system by using an FPGA (field programmable gate array) to mainly overcome the disadvantages of large volume, heavy weight and high power consumption of the traditional SAR imaging system. The small FMCW-based SAR imaging system comprises a radar front end, an acquisition preprocessing unit, a signal processing unit and a receiving host, wherein the acquisition preprocessing unit comprises an instruction communication module, an A / D (analogue / digital) acquisition module, an FPGA control and calculation module and a data sending interface; the signal processing unit comprises a data receiving interface, an FPGA control module, a DSP (digital signal processor) calculation module and a data sending interface; the acquisition preprocessing unit and the FPGA of the signal processing unit are used for receiving back waves and inertial navigation parameters of the radar front end, feeding back the regulation instruction to the radar front end to perform distance pulse pressure, transmitting data to a DSP, receiving the calculation results of the DSP and transmitting thecalculation results of the DSP to the receiving host for display. According to the small FMCW-based SAR imaging system, one picture can be imaged in real time in one second under the airborne condition, the small FMCW-based SAR imaging system has the advantages of small size, light weight, small power consumption and good reliability and can be applied to the fields of radars, guided missile, remote sensing, etc.