Theoretical Limit of Varying Pulse Interval Ability to Spaceborne SAR Terrain Matching Curved Imaging

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) terrain matching curved (TMC) imaging featured by adopting an adaptive continuous curved swath to achieve high efficiency for imaging a long curved terrains. Pulse interval (PI) design is to generate a pulse repetition frequency (PRF) sequence for high-quality data acquisition. Varying PI is used to satisfy the drastic slant range variation of the TMC imaging, resulting in a higher requirement for the number of varying PI segmentation. However, there is few discussion about the relationship between the varying PI ability and the requirement of terrain. In this paper, the theoretical limits of varying PI ability to spaceborne SAR TMC imaging is discussed in detail in two aspects: First the influential factors on the number of varying PI segmentation is analysed. Then a method for calculating the minimum number of varying PI segmentation is proposed. The minimum number varying PI segmentation is analysed with different geometric configuration.