EFFICIENT GEOSYNCHRONOUS CIRCULAR SAR RAW DATA SIMULATION OF EXTENDED 3-D SCENES

Geosynchronous Circular Synthetic Aperture Radar (GeoCSAR) has the Circular SAR configuration and undergoes a near-ellipse geosynchronous track rather a ``8ʹʹ-like track of conventional GeoSAR. It could produce three dimensional (3-D) images of extended Earth scenes. GeoCSAR raw data simulator is of vital for predicting system performance, developing suitable data processing algorithms, etc.. It should include degrading conditions such as motion instability, angular deviations and orbit perturbations in order to approach the real situation. The common generation algorithm of raw data in time domain is precise but time-consuming for extended 3-D scene. In this paper, a novel raw data simulation algorithm based on inverse Improved Polar Format Algorithm (IPFA) for GeoCSAR was proposed, which possessed both the advantages of precision of time domain simulator and efficiency of frequency domain simulator. Implementation details were presented, and several simulation results were provided and analyzed to validate the algorithm.