NEW OPERATION MODES AND AMBIGUITY ANALYSIS FOR SPACEBORNE POLARIMETRIC SAR

The ambiguity is one of the most important facts that influence the quality of SAR images. In the process of designing a spaceborne polarimetric SAR system it is required to restrain the system ambiguity and improve the image quality effectively. Although the available polarization time-division (PTD) operation mode of spaceborne polarimetric SAR system can be realized simply, its range ambiguity becomes very serious for the high-orbit spaceborne sensors. In order to resolve this problem, new operation mode based on polarization frequency-division (PFD) and polarization code-division (PCD) are proposed in this paper. The characteristics of these three operation modes are also compared in detail. The computation results have proved that the system range ambiguity can be restrained by using the two new operation modes.