Design and Performance of Spaceborne Active Low-Frequency Subsurface Radar System

The World Radiocommunication Conference 2023 (WRC-23) expanded the frequency range of spaceborne active radar for earth observation, of which 40MHz~50MHz was allowed for the first time to carry out subsurface active radar penetration detection missions, making spaceborne radar detection of glaciers in the Earth region a hot topic. This paper introduces a single-satellite low-frequency active radar detection system with two-band low-frequency active radar detection capabilities, which can achieve a performance index of 4km detection depth for polar glaciers. This paper simulates and analyzes the resolution and coverage performance achieved by the system. The results show that by combining the advantages of the two frequency bands, the technical index of horizontal resolution better than 2km can be achieved. The radar has the ability to cover more than 95 % of the area in the Arctic for 6 months, and has great application prospects in desert groundwater and underground structure detection.