Synchronization of Geo Spaceborne-Airborne Bistatic SAR

This paper analyzes the synchronization of a bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system based upon a geostationary transmitter and small "receive-only" SAR systems mounted on airplanes or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), namely GEO Spaceborne-Airborne Bistatic SAR. This paper will analyze and present our solution of the space synchronization, time synchronization, frequency synchronization and phase synchronization for the GEO Spaceborne-Airborne bistatic SAR respectively. It will first introduce the GEO Spaceborne-Airborne bistatic SAR system and geometry model briefly. Then possible solutions of the system synchronization will be discussed. It will introduce the synchronization scheme based on the direct path between the transmitter and receiver. It uses synchronization modules to realize the time and frequency synchronization. A mathematical model considering the time and frequency synchronization error is given and a phase error analysis is performed. Range and azimuth compressions of a single target are implemented by simulations.