A rapid SAR simulator and its applications for three-dimension forest canopies

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) raw signal generation need be involved in SAR simulation process of forest canopies to meet realistic situations. However, the computational complexity becomes the major problem. This paper propose a rapid SAR simulator with an effective approach to speed up the raw signal generation for three-dimension forest canopies based on the equivalent scattering process in raw signal domain consisting of a few virtual scatterers. The simulator is verified by comparing with PolSARProSim on simulation efficiency and forest height inversion. The extended forest stand application indicates the potential utilities of the simulator.