The mechanism of optical degradation for remote sensing imaging is analyzed under vibration, and the corresponding simulation model is built, which includes imaging module and vibrating module. The imaging module discusses how the plane-array camera and TDI camera work and the imaging module divides the vibration into four categories, including linear one, sinusoidal one, random one, and combined all of above. For the geosynchronous earth orbit satellite, the critical value of vibration is calculated by using the simulation model mentioned above. To verify the reliability of the proposed theoretical analysis, a properly designed semi-physical simulation system has been built. Loading a certain vibration parameter as the vibration source, the system can get a simulated degraded image. Using Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) to measure image quality, the images calculated from the simulation model and obtained by the semi-physical system present a good agreement, which verifies the accuracy and practical applicability of the proposed theoretical analysis.