Measurement and Correction of the Ionospheric TEC in P-Band ISAR Imaging

Author

Fang Zhou ; Meng-Dao Xing ; Xiang-Gen Xia ; Jia-Jia Zhang ; Guang-Cai Sun ; Zheng Bao

Author_Institution

Nat. Lab. of Radar Signal Process., Xidian Univ., Xi´an, China

Volume

12

Issue

8

fYear

2015

fDate

Aug. 2015

Firstpage

1755

Lastpage

1759

Abstract

It is commonly known that the ionosphere has significant effects on a low-frequency (particularly P-band) radar signal. It causes the degradation of the image quality in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and inverse SAR (ISAR) imaging systems. In this letter, we analyze the ionospheric effects on radar signals and find that the total electron content (TEC) is a key to the ionospheric effects. A method is proposed to evaluate the TEC from a received ISAR signal and to correct the ionospheric effects. Some real experimental results, using a ground-based P-band ISAR system to observe a space target in the ionosphere, are used to validate the proposed method.

Keywords

ionospheric disturbances; ionospheric techniques; radar imaging; remote sensing by radar; synthetic aperture radar; total electron content (atmosphere); P-Band ISAR imaging; ground-based P-band ISAR system; image quality degradation; inverse SAR imaging systems; ionospheric TEC correction; ionospheric TEC measurement; ionospheric effects; low-frequency radar signal; radar signals; synthetic aperture radar imaging systems; total electron content; Azimuth; Imaging; Ionosphere; Radar imaging; Spaceborne radar; Synthetic aperture radar; Inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR); P-band; ionospheric effects; total electron content (TEC);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2015.2424453

Filename

7103023