A novel system parameters design and performance analysis method for Distributed Satellite-borne SAR system

As a promising new technology emerged in recent years, the Distributed Satellite-borne SAR (DSS) system with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) imaging capability has been recognized by the remote sensing community as an integrated part of the spaceborne earth observation system. However, most researches on DSS were focused on individual aspects of system design/analysis and data processing, while few studies have been dedicated to establishing a standard methodological framework for universal DSS system design. Aiming at this problem, the topics of DSS system error analysis and design method are investigated in this paper. Firstly, a rigorous error propagation model of height measurement is theoretically derived from the DSS InSAR imaging geometry, and the impact of each error sources in this model on the height measurement accuracy is analyzed individually. In particular, the baseline length and its measurement error in the InSAR imaging plane are identified as the dominant factors. Second, a new method for DSS system design is proposed based on our analyses with the error propagation model. This method consists of two important phases, namely collaboration design and monostatic design. The major objective of collaboration design is to determine the configuration and parameters for the coordination between satellites in the DSS system. Afterwards, the key parameters for single satellite and the payload are determined by the monostatic design. Thirdly, a system performance analysis method is developed to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the pre-designed DSS system. In the next section, a typical example of DSS system design is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system design and analysis methods. The target DSS system has the same goal and hardware configuration as the TanDEM-X mission. Finally, the conclusion is drawn with our major findings are presented.