A New Geosynchronous SAR Constellation and its Signal Characteristics

The Geosynchronous Synthetic Aperture Radar (GEO SAR) has a long synthetic aperture time. The temporal decoherence and azimuth variance characteristics of echo are significant, that brings great challenges to signal to process. In order to reduce the synthetic aperture time and thus improve the observation flexibility and efficiency, this paper proposes a SAR system mounted on a special satellite in reverse equatorial geosynchronous orbit, so-called the reverse equatorial GEO SAR. The orbit is nearly circular and the orbital plane coincides with the equatorial plane. The satellite flies against the direction of the Earth’s rotation. The relative velocity is accelerated twice and the synthetic aperture time is shorter. The satellite does not drift in latitude direction and drifts uniformly in longitude direction. The echo has azimuth invariance property. Meanwhile, the 24-hour continuous observation can be achieved for areas with a certain range of latitude by means of large squint technique and constellation design. As the GEO SAR has high orbit, large delay, large squint angle, and wide pulse width, the complex modulation effects are generated by continuous motion between the satellite and target during the imaging period. In this paper, the uniform acceleration curve motion is used to describe the motion of both satellite and target, and the linear approximation is used to describe the slant range change in the process of transmitting and receiving one pulse. Accordingly, an accurate signal model for the reverse equatorial GEO SAR is established, which provides a theoretical model for signal characteristics analysis and imaging algorithms development.