Multi-baseline imaging: A vision for spaceborne SAR

This paper provides a vision for the future development of spaceborne SAR systems with multi-baseline imaging capability like polarimetric SAR interferometry (PolinSAR), tomography (TomoSAR) and holography (HoloSAR). The goal is to fill the multi-dimensional data space with additional information from acquisitions having different spatial or temporal baselines. Multi-baseline imaging opens the door for a new class of image products in spaceborne SAR. Well-known examples are across-track and along-track interferometry, which allow the measurement of surface topography, ground deformation, ocean currents as well as glacier movements. While across-track and along-track interferometry are well established techniques and have been widely used by current spaceborne SAR systems, PolinSAR, TomoSAR and HoloSAR are emerging techniques which are shaping the future development of spaceborne SAR. New mission concepts for multistatic SAR configurations with distributed and sparse arrays will pave the way for this development.