Impact of the plasma fluctuations in the Martian ionosphere on the performance of the synthetic aperture ground-penetrating radar

Abstract The effect of the ionospheric scintillations on the performance of the dekameter wave band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is considered. The numerical model for computer simulations, based on the multiple phase screen technique and accounting for diffraction, is formulated. The result of numerical simulations of the radar pulses is presented and analyzed. The role of the various features of the ionospheric disturbances and their influence on the radar pulse characteristic parameters is figured out and discussed. Both effects of anisotropy of the correlation function of plasma irregularities and their temporal variations are studied numerically.

[1]  K. Yeh,et al.  Radio wave scintillations in the ionosphere , 1982 .

[2]  Akira Ishimaru,et al.  Wave propagation and scattering in random media , 1997 .

[3]  A. Ivanov,et al.  Estimation of the total electron content of the Martian ionosphere using radar sounder surface echoes , 2007 .

[4]  R. Orosei,et al.  Ionospheric corrections of MARSIS subsurface sounding signals with filters including collision frequency , 2009 .

[5]  Paul S. Cannon,et al.  Effect of the ionosphere on defocusing of space‐based radars , 2009 .

[6]  A. Hérique,et al.  Correction of the ionospheric distortion on the MARSIS surface sounding echoes , 2008 .

[7]  R. Phillips,et al.  SHARAD: The MRO 2005 shallow radar , 2004 .

[8]  W. Hubbard,et al.  Theory of anisotropic refractive scintillation - Application to stellar occultations by Neptune , 1988 .

[9]  W. Root,et al.  An introduction to the theory of random signals and noise , 1958 .

[10]  Roberto Orosei,et al.  Radar Soundings of the Subsurface of Mars , 2005, Science.

[11]  F. Duru,et al.  Radar Soundings of the Ionosphere of Mars , 2005, Science.

[12]  Roberto Orosei,et al.  Performance and surface scattering models for the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) , 2003 .

[13]  Fang Li,et al.  Ionosphere tomography based on spaceborne SAR , 2008 .

[14]  R. Crane,et al.  Ionospheric scintillation , 1977, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[15]  F. Harris.  On the use of windows for harmonic analysis with the discrete Fourier transform , 1978, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[16]  S. M. Rytov,et al.  Principles of statistical radiophysics , 1987 .

[17]  Giovanni Picardi,et al.  Dielectric properties of the Martian south polar layered deposits: MARSIS data inversion using Bayesian inference and genetic algorithm , 2008 .

[18]  D. Backer,et al.  Radio Wave Propagation through a Medium Containing Electron Density Fluctuations Described by an Anisotropic Goldreich-Sridhar Spectrum , 2002, astro-ph/0202261.

[19]  Sanborn C. Brown,et al.  Propagation of electromagnetic waves in plasma , 1962 .

[20]  Janet G. Luhmann,et al.  An observational study of the nightside ionospheres of Mars and Venus with radio occultation methods , 1990 .