A Fast Scattering Model for C-Band Data Simulation in Forest Scenarios

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data simulation of forest canopies is a common method used to study the interaction between radar and forests. The forest canopy contains a large number of small leaves, which require many computing resources to calculate their backscattering coefficients and affect the simulation efficiency of SAR data. To improve the simulation efficiency, an equivalent scattering matrix model is proposed to rapidly generate the backscattering coefficient of small leaves. The equivalent scattering matrix is generated by the coherence matrix. The tree crown is divided into several cuboids, and the backscattering coefficient matrices of leaves in each cuboid are replaced by an equivalent scattering matrix to reduce the calculation burden. To ensure the simulation accuracy, the relationship between the number of scatterers in each cuboid and the simulation error is analyzed. The experimental results show that the backscattering coefficients of small leaves generated by the equivalent scattering matrix model are consistent with the simulation results by the traditional Monte Carlo model. However, the computational efficiency of the equivalent scattering matrix model is higher than that of the Monte Carlo model, and the simulation efficiency is improved by 2 to 40 times.