| Summary: | The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies is currently designing CanX-4 and CanX-5, a pair of formation-flying nanosatellites that will target centimeter-level position determination and sub-meter control. Once formation flight has been demonstrated, future missions can carry payloads designed to exploit these capabilities. Earth Observation is one such application that can benefit greatly from the availability of multiple platforms with precise position determination and attitude control. This work explores multistatic interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) as a particularly promising implementation of formation flight. Several mission scenarios are considered, including three commonly proposed InSAR constellation configurations, namely the Cartwheel, the Cross-Track Pendulum, and the Car-Pe configuration, as well as three large ( kilowatt) SAR transmitters (L-, C- and X-band) and one microsatellite transmitter (X-band, 150W). Using a framework of STK and MATLAB simulation and analysis tools, each case is evaluated with respect to the available interferometric baselines, ground coverage, resolution, and utility for selected applications including digital elevation modeling, moving target detection, and superresolution imagery. The “large” X-band transmitter is found to produce the most favorable operating area and resolution, and the Car-Pe configuration provides the greatest utility and flexibility for a combination of the three selected applications.
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