A survey of ionospheric effects on space-based radar

Abstract

In this survey, we fully review almost all potential ionospheric effects on the performance of space-based radar systems (SBRs), which operate in the ambient ionosphere environment; in particular, we review the use of space-based synthetic aperture radar systems (SARs) for imaging. There are two families of effects involved. One is the effects of the background ionosphere (non-turbulent ionosphere), such as dispersion, group delay, refraction, Faraday rotation, and phase shift. The other is the effects due to ionospheric irregularities, such as refractive index fluctuation, phase perturbation, angle-of-arrival fluctuation, pulse broadening, clutter, and amplitude scintillation. These effects adversely affect SAR imaging in several respects, such as by causing image shift in the range, and degradations of the range resolution, azimuthal resolution, and/or the resolution in height (elevation). We also review ionospheric irregularity characteristics and descriptions, propagation channel statistics, received signal statistics, and detection performance of SBRs in ionospheric scintillation situations. First, a brief outline of SBR systems and principles, and theories of wave propagation in random media, especially some effects caused by two-way propagation, is given. Finally, several of the most probable directions of future research are pointed out.