On Position and Attitude Determination Requirements for future Bistatic SAR Experiments

In future bistatic SAR experiments1 the overlapping of transmitter and receiver antenna footprints is, due to the different trajectories and velocities of the involved platforms, an issue. In this paper we focus on the planned hybrid experiment with an aircraft and TerraSAR-X as carrier platforms. The effect of unknown rotations about the body-axes on the tie point of the antenna pointing vector in Earth´s local tangent plane is described. Simulation results based on possible aircraft and satellite parameters are presented and discussed. Based on the suggested geometric modeling and results, positioning and attitude determination requirements can be easily derived for different constellations.