Low-cost Real-time Sar Simulation for Applications in Mission Planning, Education and Information Extraction

SAR simulators are important for a huge variety of applications. Realistic SAR simulations need realistic 3D models, which are often not available. Less realistic models can be used in the less accurate real-time simulation approach. Using modern graphic cards for SAR simulation even complex environments can be simulated in real-time. This is realised by implementing of SAR geometry and radiometry within standard graphics hardware, which offers 3D hardware acceleration and programmable graphics processing units (GPU). The real-time simulation capabilities are useful for mission planning, education and information extraction applications. For these applications less realistic simulation results based on less detailed models are feasible.