Analysis for integration time and resolution in geosynchronous SAR

Abstract

Geosynchronous SAR (GEO SAR) has significant potential advantages in the fields of continuous earth observation within 24 hours. Due to the increase of orbit height, the synthetic aperture trajectory tends to be curved, and thus, the conventional integration time calculation and resolution analysis methods of low earth orbit (LEO SAR) will lose effect in the GEO cases. In this paper, the maximum synthetic aperture time is analytically obtained from the vector derivation. Then the spatial resolution analysis for GEO SAR is derived in detail based on the gradient method. Simulation results validate the correctness of the proposed resolution analysis method.