STEREOID Data Processor
Design and Performance Analysis
P. Laguduvan Thyagarajan (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
A.G. Yarovyi – Mentor (TU Delft - Microwave Sensing, Signals & Systems)
Francisco Dekker – Mentor (TU Delft - Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning)
Yuanhao Li – Mentor (TU Delft - Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning)
Lorenzo Iannini – Mentor (TU Delft - Optical and Laser Remote Sensing)
Chris Verhoeven – Coach (TU Delft - Electronics)
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Abstract
Stereo Thermo-Optically Enhanced Radar for Earth, Ocean, Ice, and land Dynamics (STEREOID) is one of the candidates of the ESA (European Space Agency) , Earth Explorer 10 missions. The novel constellation system will consist of the active Sentinel-1 satellites and two passive spacecrafts, which can provide flexible baseline configurations. The main objective of the mission lies
in monitoring the variation of spatially diverse ice sheets, the eruptions of earthquakes, the volcano activities, and the landslides, playing therefore an extremely important role in understanding the global climate dynamics and the geophysical processes involved. The purpose of the thesis is to develop an end-to-end simulator incorporating the STEREOID bistatic configuration operating in TOPS ( Terrain Observation by Progressive Scans) mode and evaluate its performance. To achieve this goal, the key component of the simulator, the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) processing kernel was first implemented. The kernel employs an imaging algorithm which assists in image formation and focusing for different bistatic geometries generated by relevant working modes of the STEREOID mission. This is further extended to bistatic TOPS acquisition mode with azimuth beamforming under dual antenna receiver configuration of STEREOID. The performance of STEREOID mission is evaluated under different bistatic geometries and the dual beamforming strategy is evaluated for parameters such as resolution, pointing errors and gain imbalances. This is evaluated to analyse and understand the importance of calibration errors introduced into the system.