The track of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system mounted on a geosynchronous orbit (GEO) satellite can be curvilinear. GEO spaceborne/airborne bistatic (SA-Bi) SAR, which employs a GEO satellite as a transmitter and an aeroplane that works on the 'receive-only' mode as a receiver, is distinct from general bistatic SAR systems. During coherent integration time, the rotation of ship targets results in a time-varying Doppler frequency shift that produces a smeared Doppler spectrum and a blurred image after Fourier transform. This article mainly studies the time-frequency characteristics of ship targets in a GEO SA-Bi SAR system. First, the geometric model of a GEO SA-Bi SAR in ship target imaging is built, and the Doppler frequency shift function induced by target rotation is derived in detail. Then, the instantaneous frequency characteristics of moving targets are analytically calculated based on the time-frequency analysis method. Moreover, a rotation target imaging strategy of GEO SA-Bi SAR based on the time-frequency analysis method is proposed and tested with simulation data, which demonstrates the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method.
