Simulation of ionospheric effects on SAR imaging with noise at P-band

In the past, most of the spaceborne synthetic aperture radars (SAR) operating at C-band or higher frequencies, and the ionospheric effects are negligible in these bands. Recently, the use of lower frequencies for measuring the foliage and ground penetration has been an increasing interest. However, the ionosphere is a highly dispersive medium, and can cause group delay and pulse broadening when the carrier frequency is low, such as P-band. Thus the range resolution in SAR imaging is degraded due to the ionospheric effects. And the irregularity of the ionosphere also can reduce the azimuthal resolution. Furthermore, the spaceborne SAR receiver would generate noise, which affects the quality of the echoes so as to SAR imaging. This paper presents both the analytical study and numerical simulation to investigate the ionospheric effects on SAR imaging with Gaussian white noise at P-band.