LuTan-1 (LT-1) is the first Chinese civilian synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite mission dedicated for interferometry. The mission is composed of a constellation of two identical satellites, each carrying an advanced L-band fullpolarimetric SAR. Equipped with both bistatic and mono-static capabilities, LT-1 is designed to generate high-resolution digital elevation model and deformation products for resource and disaster monitoring purposes. Here we provide an overview of LT-1’s satellite and its SAR system, describe the technical challenges that occurred during the development such as the noninterrupted phase synchronization, range ambiguity suppression with hybrid compact polarization and the non-linear frequency modulation waveform. Then we present the data processing pipeline, calibration, and validation reports collected since its launch in early 2022, together with results of several selected applications and experimental modes such as hybrid compact polarization.

The innovative bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) mission LuTan-1 (LT-1) employs a non-interrupted synchronization scheme to achieve high-precision phase synchronization. While radio frequency interference (RFI) is a major factor in deteriorating phase synchronization performance. To present the effect of RFI on the synchronization phase clearly, the characteristics of RFI in the synchronization link are described in detail, and a precise analytic expression between the amplitude, frequency, and phase of RFI and synchronization phase error is established. Furthermore, a novel pulse compression-based notch (PCN) method is proposed to eliminate the phase error introduced by RFI. In the proposed method, the saturated distortion signals resulting from strong interferences are detected and discarded by the distribution features of their modes. Then, inspired by contrary thinking, the synchronization signal after pulse compression is notched instead of the RFI. A fast missing-data iterative adaptive approach (Fast MIAA) is performed to recover the gaped RFI signal and remove it from the compressed signal. Finally, the correct synchronization phases can be extracted from the peak positions of the remaining signals. Experimental results derived from using simulated and real synchronization data of the LT-1 system validate the performance of the proposed RFI mitigation method.

In an azimuth multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, the unavoidable channel error will result in virtual targets or azimuth ambiguity, which significantly degrades the quality of high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) SAR image. Calibration of the imbalances between channels has been an important topic. First, to present the channel error effect on the final image clearly, a precise relation between the amplitudes of virtual targets and amplitude–phase error is established by matrix trace, which applies to the case of a certain amplitude–phase error. In addition, the total amplitude of all targets represented by the ${L^{1}}$ -norm reaches the minimum when there is no channel error. Based on this principle, an image-domain least ${L^{1}}$ -norm method is proposed to estimate the phase error between channels. By utilizing the focused high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) images, the proposed algorithm achieves high estimation accuracy. Moreover, no redundant channel is required in the proposed algorithm compared with the subspace-based method. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed channel error effect analysis and calibration method is validated by both the simulated and real SAR data.

The azimuth multichannel synthetic aperture radar (SAR), as one of the mainstream technologies for achieving high-resolution and wide-swath (HRWS) imaging, has been successfully employed in several on-orbit SAR missions. However, the unavoidable phase errors among channels result in azimuth ambiguity, deteriorating the recognizability of targets in SAR images. Additionally, the radio frequency interference (RFI) exacerbates the difficulty of phase error estimation. To address this issue, a phase error calibration method based on least spectrum difference (LSD) is proposed. Firstly, the multichannel signals are reconstructed using the linear mapping form of the reconstruction algorithm. Secondly, the objective function is established based on the continuity of the azimuth spectrum, by which only the signals near the discontinuity points are proposed. Finally, the optimal estimation of the phase differences can be obtained after iteration. In LSD method, the RFI to the objective function is mitigated due to the operation in the range-Doppler domain, and the iteration is proposed only using a few data near the discontinuity points thus saving much computational cost. Experimental results based on the simulated data and real bistatic echoes of the LuTan-1 (LT-1) mission validate the superiority of the proposed LSD method.

In the bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) system, the unavoidable frequency deviation between the oscillators (USOs) will result in additional phase modulation in the demodulated radar signal, which significantly degrades the quality of the SAR image and digital elevation model (DEM) product. The innovative L-band spaceborne BiSAR system LuTan-1 (LT-1) employs a non-interrupted synchronization scheme to acquire the synchronization phase error. This advanced phase synchronization scheme avoids interrupting the normal BiSAR data acquisition and further increases the synchronization frequency. However, some non-ideal factors in the transmission link like attenuation, multipath effect, interference, etc., may cause the synchronization phase to be polluted by noise. A phase denoising approach based on compressive sensing (CS) is proposed to improve the accuracy of synchronization phase. The imaging phase with high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is input into the K-SVD algorithm to learn the prior information, and then the noise of the synchronization compensation phase is eliminated by maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation. The data acquired from the ground validation system of the LT-1 synchronization module are adopted for the validation experiment. The proposed phase denoising method achieves higher phase synchronization accuracy compared with traditional ones. The processing results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method and demonstrate its potential for future on-orbit applications of the LT-1 mission.

In the bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BiSAR) system, the deviation between two oscillators in different platforms will cause an additional modulation of BiSAR echoes. Therefore, phase synchronization is one of the key issues that must be addressed for the BiSAR system. The oscillator phase error model and the principle of phase synchronization are firstly described. The waveform diversity technology has been widely used in many fields, for example, the hearing aids device and the recognition of auditory input source in cocktail party problem. Inspired by this, an advanced phase synchronization scheme based on coherent integration and waveform diversity is proposed. The synchronization signal and radar signal are orthogonal signals which can be separated by using waveform diversity technique. After extracting the synchronization signal, the phase synchronization accuracy can be further improved by coherent integration. The transmission of synchronization signals between two synchronization antennas is analyzed, followed by the theoretical error analysis. Then, the processing of separating the echo signal and synchronization signal is described in detail. The simulation experiments are performed. The accuracy of phase synchronization can reach 1 degree, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed synchronization scheme.