Information Characteristics of an Orbital Side-Scan Synthetic Aperture Radar

Ratios are given for estimating the amount of information in the channels of sensing and data transmission of the orbital synthetic aperture radars (SAR) based on information-theoretic and statistical methods. They are presented in terms of the indicators characterizing the amount of information received about the state of the object of observation. It is shown that the sensing channel should use significantly redundant information in relation to the final result of radar observation. On the example of the SAR of the “Venera-15” and “Venera-16” spacecrafts, the specific conditions of an orbital radar imaging are illustrated, and its informational characteristics are given for both methods of transmitting observation data. The qualitative consideration carried out in the paper makes it possible to estimate the potentially achievable reduction in the amount of information in the data transmission channel when using on-board SAR signal processing under specific radar imaging conditions.