Analysis of Time and Beam Synchronization Errors for Distributed Spaceborne SAR System

Synchronization is a key problem in distributed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. In this paper, we perform a complex mathematical deduction and then analyze the influences of time synchronization on the SAR imaging and interferometric process. We discuss the relationship between time and phase synchronization, considering that different oscillators in separated transmitters and receivers lead to both time and phase synchronization errors. With respect to beam synchronization, we present the effects of the accuracies of beam pointing and satellite attitude on the antenna gain, based on the attitude-steering strategy, which involves azimuth weighting of the Doppler spectra for independent zero-Doppler beam steering. We also analyze the influences of beam synchronization on Doppler decorrelation, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), and overlapping swath error. We conduct simulations to validate the analysis results. Our findings provide guidance for system design.