The Impact of Orbital Control on the Quality of Biomass Estimates through P-Band SAR Tomography

Abstract

Due to the considerable resources investment, fine tuning the parameters of a spaceborne SAR system far in advance is very important. Most of them can be set by resorting to synthetic data, however models of complex natural phenomena are often not reliable enough to drive the choice. In this case, real data coming from airborne campaigns might be used as long as it is properly translated in a spaceborne setting. The problem of simulating spaceborne acquisitions was recently tackled and led to the definition of a new algorithm here exploited to analyze the effect of small changes in the system parameters.This work presents an analysis of the bond between biomass and tomography varying the orbits of the simulated spaceborne system. Different look angles and total baseline apertures are explored; moreover, random fluctuations of the trajectories are considered. These analyses provide recommendations about the nominal orbits and their accuracy.