A new satellite attitude steering approach for zero Doppler centroid

Generally the Doppler centroid of the spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system is not zero because of the earth rotation, which results in a decrease in imaging precision, interferometry accuracy, ground moving target indication performance and other factors. This paper proposes a new satellite attitude steering approach to perform yaw and pitch steering for SAR satellites to enable the Doppler centroid to be total zero. Based on the basic methodology of the SAR satellite attitude steering, the desired yaw angle and the pitch angle are derived. And comparisons with the attitude steering technique currently applied are presented. Simulation and analysis show that this method can obtain better results. (4 pages)