Space-borne synthetic aperture radar received data simulation based on airborne SAR image data Original Research Article

Starting from airborne SAR image data, a method of simulating space-borne SAR raw received data is proposed, excluding the conventional method of simulating the targets’ back-scattering coefficients through the model of three-dimensional distributed targets. The airborne SAR image data are regarded as space-borne targets’ back-scattering coefficients, and raw data are generated by using space-borne SAR echo signal model. Raw data’s simulation of space-borne SAR can help us to optimum design of space-borne SAR system scheme, test and evaluate the performance of every imaging algorithm, and research motion error from satellite platform having influence on received data and image quality.