Ionospheric effects on synthetic aperture radar at VHF
Synthetic aperture radars (SAR) operated from airplanes have been used at VHF because of their enhanced foliage and ground penetration compared to radars operated at UHF. A satellite-borne VHF SAR would have considerable utility but in order to operate with high resolution it would have to use both a large relative bandwidth and a large aperture. The presence of the ionosphere in the propagation path of the radar will cause a deterioration of the imaging because of dispersion over the bandwidth and group path changes in the imaged area over the collection aperture. In this paper we present calculations of the effects of a deterministic ionosphere on SAR imaging for a radar operated with a 100 MHz bandwidth centered at 250 MHz and over an angular aperture of 23{degrees}. The ionosphere induces a point spread function with an approximate half-width of 150 m in the slant-range direction and of 25 m in the cross-range direction compared to the nominal resolution of 1.5 m in both directions.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 460790
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-96-2985; CONF-970579-1; ON: DE96014808
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: IEEE National radar conference, Syracuse, NY (United States), 13-15 May 1997; Other Information: PBD: [1997]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Ionospheric effects on a wide-bandwidth, polarimetric, space-based, synthetic-aperture radar
Ionospheric effects on a wide-bandwidth, polarimetric, space-based, synthetic-aperture radar