On Modeling RCS of Aircraft for Flight Simulation

This paper investigates the implementation of the radar cross section (RCS) of aircraft in modeling and simulation (M&S). More specifically, it addresses the tradeoff between accuracy and computational cost introduced by spatial RCS fluctuations. High-resolution RCS matrices, generated using Physical Optics (PO), were used in an investigation of RCS matrix resolution, and an evaluation of different bilinear interpolation methods is presented. The spatial Fourier transform was used for resolution analysis. It was found that the smallest RCS interpolation error was obtained using splines. Furthermore, results showed that the distribution of the relative interpolation error in detection range was well approximated by a log-normal distribution.