A Parallel , High - Fidelity Radar Model Matthew Horsley , Benjamin

Accurate modeling of Space Surveillance sensors is necessary for a variety of applications. Accurate models can be used to perform trade studies on sensor designs, locations, and scheduling. In addition, they can be used to predict system-level performance of the Space Surveillance Network to a collision or satellite break-up event. A high fidelity physics-based radar simulator has been developed for Space Surveillance applications. This simulator is designed in a modular fashion, where each module describes a particular physical process or radar function (radio wave propagation & scattering, waveform generation, noise sources, etc.) involved in simulating the radar and its environment. For each of these modules, multiple versions are available in order to meet the end-users needs and requirements. For instance, the radar simulator supports different atmospheric models in order to facilitate different methods of simulating refraction of the radar beam. The radar model also has the capability to use highly accurate radar cross sections generated by the method of moments, accelerated by the fast multipole method. To accelerate this computationally expensive model, it is parallelized using MPI. As a testing framework for the radar model, it is incorporated into the Testbed Environment for Space Situational Awareness (TESSA). TESSA is based on a flexible, scalable architecture, designed to exploit high-performance computing resources and allow physics-based simulation of the SSA enterprise. In addition to the radar models, TESSA includes hydrodynamic models of satellite intercept and debris generation, orbital propagation algorithms, optical brightness calculations, optical system models, object detection algorithms, orbit determination algorithms, simulation analysis and visualization tools. Within this framework, observations and tracks generated by the new radar model are compared to results from a phenomenological radar model. In particular, the new model will be used to simulate an S-band upgrade to the space fence.