Ionosphere Scintillation Effects on Synthetic Aperture Radars

Inhalt:
Signal scintillation due to propagation through a turbulent ionosphere may cause strong modifications of transmitted signals. This can be essentially observed at low latitudes (from – 20deg to +20deg) and at high latitudes. The low latitudes region is the most affected and the scintillation level is related to the solar activity. The calculation of the transmitted field allows estimating signal impairments, in particular its intensity and phase fluctuations. The Mutual Coherence Function characterizes the channel transfer function. It is required for radar performances assessment after propagation through the turbulent medium. It has been shown that under simplified hypothesis, an analytical solution can be derived allowing a sensitivity analysis study.