Fast physical optics calculation for SAR imaging of complex scatterers

The physical optics (PO) approximation is often used to the approximate the scattering from electrically large, perfectly conducting (PEC) objects. To quickly generate radar cross section data of a large range of aspect angles and frequencies, several methods are used to accelerate the PO calculation. There are: (1) multi-level Z-buffering for self-shadowing calculations, (2) Gordon's method for integration, (3) accelerated frequency sampling, and (4) Fourier interpolation of the RCS. The results show the utility of combining these methods, which typically have been applied individually. The physical optics (PO) approximation is widely used to the approximate the scattering from electrically large, perfectly conducting (PEC) objects. Such applications including generating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) test data, which requires the scattering problem to be solved for many incident plane wave directions and frequencies. This paper is concerned with quickly and accurately evaluating this data.