Real-time Sar Simulation of Complex Scenes Using Programmable Graphics Processing Units

The usability of SAR simulations is often limited by the long processing times of traditional SAR simulators which apply the ray tracing approach. Ray tracing, which is also used for virtual image generation, is based on accurate physical models, but is unfortunately rather computational time intensive. Because of this, real-time applications, like interactive visualisation, in general use the rasterization method. Rasterization is less complex to calculate and therefore faster. The ability to simulate even complex SAR scenes in real-time is a new development in SAR simulation. In this paper we present the real-time SAR simulator SARViz, which uses rasterization and is implemented on programmable graphics processing units, which are nowadays included in most modern PCs. SARViz is able to visualise even complex scenes in real-time, using the tremendous development in computer graphics for the next generation SAR simulator.