A fast raw data simulator for the stripmap SAR based on CUDA via GPU

This paper presents a novel and compressive SAR raw data simulator based on CUDA via GPU. The stripmap synthetic aperture radar(SAR) is introduced to model antenna illumination behavior. Compared with conventional raw data simulators, we no longer limit our research interests on a single point target´s raw data simulation, but expend it to that of complex scene. In order to compensate the greatly increasing operational time with booming computational complexity, we optimize the process in two aspects. In the first, modern GPUs have the potential for highly parallel calculation, and it makes them much more efficient than CPUs in processing large blocks of data. Therefore, we implement the simulator on CUDA. The second method is to take advantage of symmetry in single raw data matrix based on stripmap mode SAR, and reduce 75 percent computational complexity. By these two effective methods, the simulator experiences an attractive operating time and enjoys high efficiency. Some simulation results prove the simulated raw data is acceptable in accuracy.