Kalman filtering for SAR satellite yaw steering

Abstract

Abstract The algorithm based on Kalman filtering was proposed to calculate yaw steering angles of spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. We establish the process equation and the observation equation by proper design. Performance analysis and computer simulations demonstrate that Kalman filtering may take advantages in both numerical precision and computational efficiency. It therefore can be applied to SAR satellites in a wide range of microwave bands (C, X, Ku) along noncircular orbits. In addition, an efficient algorithm based on simple interpolation may be employed in practice. Since the Kalman filter is linear in nature, the fast computation makes possible the implementation of accurate onboard processing.