On Orbital Determination of the Lunar-Based SAR Under Apsidal Precession

The signal propagation of the lunar-based synthetic aperture radar (LBSAR) is affected by perturbations of the lunar orbit, wherein the apsidal precession that exerts a significant impact on the LBSAR imaging performance of the LBSAR deserves special care. Accordingly, the orbital determination used to maintain well-focused quality and high geometric fidelity in the existing SAR system becomes critical for the LBSAR. In this article, through establishing criteria for the orbital determination of LBSAR based on its imaging performance under the influence of apsidal precession, we investigate the accuracy requirements for the LBSAR orbital determination in terms of the position and velocity determinations. Analysis results show that the required accuracy for the LBSAR position determination depends on the geometric fidelity in the range direction, while the accuracy requirement for the velocity determination is dominated by the azimuth positioning accuracy. The focusing quality is not a primary issue for the LBSAR orbital determination. In addition, the far look angle of LBSAR accounts for the highest accuracy requirement in the position and velocity determinations; thus, it can be treated as the optimum look angle for the LBSAR orbital determination. It is also found that both velocity and position determinations are challenging in the
${z}$
-direction for the LBSAR.