A Two-Step Phase Compensation-Based Imaging Method for GNSS-Based Bistatic SAR: Extraction and Compensation of Ionospheric Phase Scintillation

Abstract

The GNSS-based bistatic SAR (GNSS-BSAR) system has emerged as a hotspot due to its low power consumption, nice concealment, and worldwide reach. However, the weak landing power density of the GNSS signal often necessitates prolonged integration to achieve an adequate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this case, the effects of the receiver’s time-frequency errors and atmospheric disturbances are significant and cannot be ignored. Therefore, we propose an ionospheric scintillation compensation-based imaging scheme for dual-channel GNSS-BSAR system. This strategy first extracts the reference phase, which contains the ionospheric phase scintillation and other errors. Subsequently, the azimuth phase of the target is divided into difference phase and reference phase. We apply the two-step phase compensation to eliminate Doppler phase errors, thus achieving precise focusing of SAR images. Three sets of experiments using the GPS L5 signal as the illuminator were conducted, coherently processing a 1.5 km by 0.8 km scene about 300 s. The comparative results show that the proposed method exhibited better focusing performance, avoiding the practical challenges encountered by traditional autofocus algorithms. Additionally, ionospheric phase scintillation extracted at different times of the day suggest diurnal variations, preliminary illustrating the potential of this technology for ionospheric-related studies.