Geosynchronous orbit synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) has a long integration time and a large imaging scene. Therefore, various nonideal factors are easily accumulated, introducing phase errors and degrading the imaging quality. Within the long integration time, tropospheric status changes with time and space, which will result in image shifts and defocusing. According to the characteristics of GEO SAR, the modeling, and quantitative analysis of background troposphere and turbulence are conducted. For background troposphere, the accurate GEO SAR signal spectrum, which takes into account the time-varying troposphere, is deduced. The influences of different rates of changing (ROC) of troposphere with time are analyzed. Finally, results are verified using the refractive index profile data from Fengyun (FY) 3C satellite and the tropospheric zenith delays data from international GNSS service (IGS). The time-space changes of troposphere can cause image shifts which only depend on the satellite beam-foot velocity and the linear ROC of troposphere. The image defocusing is related to the wavelength, resolution requirement, and the second and higher orders of ROC. The short-wavelength GEO SAR systems are more susceptible to impacts, while L-band GEO SAR will be affected when the integration time becomes longer. Tropospheric turbulence will cause the amplitude and phase random fluctuations resulting in image defocusing. However, in the natural environment, radio waves are very weakly affected by turbulence, and the medium-inclined GEO SAR of L- to C-band will not be affected, while the Xband will be influenced slightly.@en

The sub-satellite track of geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) presents the figure "8" or "O", which causes the great changes of platform motion direction and the different projection of anisotropic irregularities along the line-of-sight (LOS) direction. Due to the almost equal angle velocity to that of Earth, the GEO SAR has smaller ionospheric penetration point (IPP) scanning velocity which is much smaller to the counterpart of the low earth orbit SAR (LEO SAR) while is comparable to the drifting velocity of irregularities, which will affect the effective azimuthal velocity. These facts lead to the consequence that the satellite signals from the GEO SAR would become more vulnerable when they are transmitted in the environment where the ionospheric scintillation occurs. However, few works are focused on these mentioned issues towards the GEO SAR system. In this paper, the impacts of ionospheric scintillation on GEO SAR imaging will be analyzed considering the anisotropy and drifting velocity of irregularities. The anisotropy and drifting velocity effects can both originate from the effect on power spectral density (PSD) of phase screen which is used to model the ionospheric scintillation effects. Based on the data from international geomagnetic reference field (IGRF) and satellite tool kit (STK), the GEO SAR imaging simulations for different GEO SAR orbital configurations and positions are carried out. The simulation results demonstrate that the anisotropy and the drifting velocity of irregularities will cause the changes of stripe direction and affect the quality of GEO SAR images.

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