Avoiding the ionospheric scintillation interference on geosynchronous SAR by orbit optimization

L-band geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) images will most likely deteriorate in the presence of ionosphere scintillation interference due to the low carrier frequency of GEO SAR. Meanwhile, because of the high orbit and the long working time above the region with the active ionosphere, GEO SAR will experience ionospheric scintillation with a higher probability. To make the GEO SAR avoid being interfered by ionospheric scintillation, we propose an orbit-optimization strategy by utilizing the diurnal and geographical pattern of the ionospheric scintillation occurrence in this letter. As the equatorial region is likely to experience ionospheric scintillation during the specified time window from the early evening after sunset to midnight, the orbit can be optimized by tuning the GEO SAR orbit parameters (e.g., a proper time past perigee) to avoid imaging over the equatorial region during the specified time window. Finally, simulation is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the method under the proposed three types of GEO SAR orbits, and the corresponding effective sets of time past perigee are obtained.