An image acquisition planning tool for optimizing information content in image data of spaceborne SAR systems

Abstract

In contrast to remote sensing with optical sensors, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites require a slant imaging geometry for image acquisition. This fact and because SAR systems operate their sensors actively emphasize that the resulting shadowing effects can have crucial influence on the information content of the image product. Additionally, information retrieval is aggravated by layover effects, where e.g. signatures of target objects superimpose with clutter information. Especially for security applications, the prediction of the expected information content and the calculation of layover and shadow regions during mission planning could greatly improve the image product. This paper presents a toolset to optimize imaging geometry parameters for the image acquisition of a SAR sensor, that performs simulation techniques for finding layover and shadow regions in a given target scene. The described methods will be verified by applying them to TerraSAR-X system parameters and image data.