Effects of Target Positioning Error on Motion Compensation for Airborne Interferometric SAR

The measurement inaccuracies of Inertial Measurement Unit/Global Positioning System (IMU/GPS) as well as the positioning error of the target may contribute to the residual uncompensated motion errors in the MOtion COmpensation (MOCO) approach based on the measurement of IMU/GPS. Aiming at the effects of target positioning error on MOCO for airborne interferometric SAR, the paper firstly deduces a mathematical model of residual motion error bring out by target positioning error under the condition of squint. And the paper analyzes the effects on the residual motion error caused by system sampling delay error, the Doppler center frequency error and reference DEM error which result in target positioning error based on the model. Then, the paper discusses the effects of the reference DEM error on the interferometric SAR image quality, the interferometric phase and the coherent coefficient. The research provides theoretical bases for the MOCO precision in signal processing of airborne high precision SAR and airborne repeat-pass interferometric SAR.