Ionosar - collaborative research towards understanding and mitigating ionospheric effects in SAR

The theoretical framework necessary to facilitate the mitigation of ionospheric physical effects on amplitude and phase of low-frequency space-based synthetic aperture radars (SAR) is presented. By way of a unique research collaboration the authors have developed mathematical and stochastic descriptors of the spatio-temporal structure and its impact on SAR signals passing through the ionosphere during different levels of scintillation. The authors have developed a prototype integrated ionospheric processor that combines multiple existing and newly developed correction methods with the goal to maximize correction robustness and accuracy. For the first time, realistic stochastic models describing the amplitude and spatial structure the ionosphere were developed and validated; thereby, allowing the study and discovery of the origin of SAR image artifacts that are caused by ionosphere scintillation; i.e., a noise-like high frequency phase distortion.