A GPU based real-time SAR simulation for complex scenes

This paper presents a novel simulator which uses programmable graphics processing units (GPU) to generate Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The conventional SAR simulations, based on mere mathematical computation, are usually time-consuming and not intuitionistic. In this paper, a new method which can simulate real-time SAR images even for complex scenes is developed. The simulator takes the advantage of computer graphics in three-dimensional display and combines it with SAR principle to yield the SAR images. This is implemented on graphics hardware, which offers 3D hardware acceleration and programmable GPU.