Space-surface bistatic synthetic aperture radar - prospective and problems

Abstract

The paper introduced a feasibility analysis of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with novel architecture. Two essential peculiarities are discussed: the system configuration with a moving transmitter when the receiver is stationary and noncooperative transmitters utilization for the system. The system is named space-surface BSAR or S-SBSAR. The system analysis confirms its feasibility. S-S SAR could find numerous applications where an observation area of ~20-30 km relevant to the receiver is acceptable. S-SBSAR space resolution corresponds to the general approach to BSAR when the resolution degradation due to a non-optimal satellite-targets-receiver geometrical position could be resolved using the satellites diversity.