The P-band synthetic aperture radar of the European
Space Agency BIOMASS mission will be affected by ionospheric
phase scintillation at high latitudes, which introduces
a random high-order azimuth phase error. The dependence of
the performance of the phase gradient autofocus (PGA) algorithm
for scintillation compensation on the strength of ionospheric
turbulence and the signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) is analyzed. In
order to keep resolution degradation below 2%, the SCR must
exceed 16 and 20 dB for turbulence strengths CkL = 1033 and
1034, respectively. For large values of CkL, phase scintillation
adds significantly to post-PGA degradation in the integrated and
peak sidelobe ratios. Simulations based on scenes derived from
PALSAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of PGA.