Potentialities and limitations of hybrid space-airborne bistatic SAR

Recently important experimentations were conducted on the use of space-airborne bistatic SAR. All the per-formed experiments relied on side-looking geometry both for the transmitter and the receiver, with platforms moving on parallel tracks, thus reducing geometric and radiometric distortions and focusing on synchronization and processing issues. However, present and future satellite illuminators shall allow more general observation geometries to be exploited for several additional applications with respect to remote sensing, such as navigation and surveillance, and the airborne receivers, depending on their working scenario, could be forced to gather data from arbitrary directions. On this basis a geometric analysis is carried out to define image resolutions and to indi-viduate best/worst illumination conditions of the spaceborne transmitter.