Abstract
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) simulation is widely used for system design, processing techniques development, and mission planning. However, there is no readily available and free framework for SAR raw signal simulation, and many teams and organizations struggle with developing their own simulator from scratch, repeating work that others have done earlier. This work’s purpose is to create a simple, open-source SAR simulation framework that can be used for many purposes and is available for free to everyone. It is a ready tool for SAR processing techniques verification, and thanks to its open-source nature, it fosters collaboration between scientists, both on the simulation and the tool development. Moreover, as the simulation’s underlying mathematics is described in detail in this article, it may serve as a handbook for the radar’s simulation. The simulator was prepared as a stand-alone, multiplatform software working in the Matlab/Octave environment. It is available in an online software repository that allows others to contribute to the original code or to create forks of it. The simulator supports monostatic, bistatic, and multistatic configurations with shadowing. The surface model includes roughness using the modified Phong model, transparency, and complex reflectivity. The antenna pattern is defined with a general two-dimensional model. The article is concluded with the simulator’s demonstrations, including antenna pattern, Doppler shift, and various surface parameters. It is expected that this simulator will be widely adopted and improved by many collaborators.
Highlights
S YNTHETIC Aperture Radar technology is a crucial imaging and remote sensing method in various fields, and new Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems are continually being developed
SAR simulation tools are used at every step of system development and deployment, such as system design and verification, algorithm testing (target recognition, GMTI (Ground Moving Target Indication), autofocusing), and mission co-simulation
There are many SAR simulators, most of them are closed-source, used only by a single research group or a company. This is acceptable for SAR simulators deployed as standalone commercial products; most of the existing simulators are part of larger projects, with many not being under development anymore
Summary
S YNTHETIC Aperture Radar technology is a crucial imaging and remote sensing method in various fields, and new SAR systems are continually being developed. It is not meant to be a single solution for every possible simulation problem but rather a common base to build upon Such an approach will reduce development time and foster collaboration between various teams worldwide. It has to be noted that ”a SAR raw signal simulator is not a surrogate of the actual SAR data campaign but rather a complementary tool in order to better understand and exploit the geophysical information contained in the SAR imagery” [53] With this in mind, it becomes evident that a universal SAR simulator, desirable, is impossible to create, as the simulator must be suited for its intended use. An additional advantage is that the planes have only four parameters (transparency, roughness, magnitude, phase), so it is possible to create and manipulate scenes in standard CAD software, where the planes have four parameters (red, green, blue, transparency)
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