Abstract: Synthetic aperture radar(SAR) is widely applied since it can break through the limitation of resolution by antenna aperture. In this paper, the focused electromagnetic(EM) vortex beam is applied to synthetic aperture radar to realize 3D imaging. By appropriately designing the imaging geometry, height resolution can be achieved with the use of the phase characteristics of EM vortex wave, and the relationship between height resolution and the number of orbital angular momentum(OAM) mode and radar parameters is derived. Considering the vortex phase term introduced in the echo signal, the improved back projection algorithm is applied to realize 3D imaging, and then sparse recovery algorithm is introduced to reduce the demand of the number of OAM mode. Simulation results indicate that the targets distributed at different heights can be accurately reconstructed, and high resolution is realized by sparse recovery method with few OAM modes. The method in this paper provides a certain reference for the research of new radar imaging system.