Scattering Center Modeling of Typical Planetary Landforms for Planetary Geomorphologic Exploration

Radar imaging of typical planet landforms can be used for planetary exploration such as landform recognition and geometry measurement. This communication realizes high-resolution imaging simulations of typical planetary landforms, such as craters, hills, and volcanoes, by using parametric scattering center (SC) models. Based on the geometric models of these typical landforms, parametric SC models are constructed from scattered solutions of the physical optics (POs) method. Because the SC models take geometric parameters as model parameters, these models can simulate the scattered waves of landforms of different sizes. These SC models are validated by the PO results. In addition, the landform types can be recognized and their geometrical parameters are further extracted by SC model matching. The extracted geometric parameters show good agreement with real landforms, demonstrating that the SC models of typical planetary landforms have potential applications in planetary geomorphologic exploration.