High accuracy SAR echo generation approach using space-time-variant backscattering characteristics

In order to generate high accuracy data for space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image interpretation, a novel parallel SAR echo generation approach is proposed in this paper. Target's backscattering coefficient is variable at the condition of wide bandwidth and large aspect angle. Considering targets' space-variant and time-variant backscattering, electromagnetic scattering at arbitrary aspect angle and frequency point is calculated accurately by Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). However, FDTD is a time-domain method causing large computation load, thus a parallel processing scheme is designed to reduce simulation time. It was observed that proposed approach provided higher image quality compared to classical method, and parallel scheme was also verified effective in the experiment.