Geosynchronous SAR tomography: Theory and first experimental verification using beidou IGSO satellite

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) tomography (TomoSAR) techniques exploit multipass acquisitions of the same scene with slightly different view angles, and allow generating fully 3-D images, providing an estimation of scatterers' distribution along range, azimuth, and elevation directions. This paper extends TomoSAR to geosynchronous SAR (GEO TomoSAR). First, the potential and performance of GEO TomoSAR were analyzed from the perspective of orbital perturbation and the resulting large spatial baseline. Then, the rotation-induced decorrelation problems induced by the along-track baseline component were analyzed. In addition, the optimized acquisition geometry and tomographic processing flow were given, and the computer simulation verification was also completed. Finally, the equivalent validation experiment based on Beidou inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) navigation satellite was carried out to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of GEO TomoSAR. The experimental system employs the Beidou IGSO satellite as illuminator of opportunity and a ground system collecting and processing reflected echoes. This is the first time to employ the data from repeat-track Beidou IGSO satellites for tomographic processing. The 3-D imaging of the urban area using this experimental system was presented and then verified using LiDAR cloud data as reference. The results show that GEO TomoSAR can form the baseline of the order of hundreds of kilometers in elevation, which has the ability to achieve a resolution of 5 m in elevation.