A novel rapid SAR simulator based on equivalent scatterers for three-dimensional forest canopies

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) simulation of 3-D forest canopies is a powerful tool for studying the interaction between radar and forest, for testing new applications, and for devising inversion algorithms of forest structures. SAR raw-signal generation is frequently used in point-target simulation but is rarely used in 3-D forest simulation. The existing simulators directly produce SAR images based on an impulse response function (IRF) without involving raw-signal generation and various nonideal factors. In this paper, a novel simulator to produce SAR images of 3-D forest canopies is proposed. It incorporates a SAR raw-signal generation process taking account of various nonideal factors such as trajectory deviation of radar platforms and complexity of natural environments, which is more faithful to realistic remote sensing systems. Furthermore, an approach to speed up the raw-signal generation is put forward based on the equivalent scattering model consisting of a few virtual scatterers with specially calculated positions and backscattering matrices. Thus, the raw signals received from the entire forest canopy can be equivalent to those from virtual scatterers in the case of tiny slant-range errors. The error sensitivity of equivalent conditions is analyzed, and the optimum selection of equivalent parameters is derived considering the compromise between precision and efficiency. The results of simulation and forest height inversion demonstrate the feasibility and potential utilities of the proposed simulator.