Passive and active calibrator characterization using a spaceborne SAR system simulator

This paper presents a spaceborne SAR system simulator based on a coherent approach. After a description of the original aspects of the computer simulator (i.e., digital terrain model, Earth ellipsoid rotation, space platform orbital and attitude dynamics, antenna pattern, chirp sampling, and two-dimensional compression), the characterization of passive and active calibrators embedded in different backgrounds is discussed in terms of the SAR impulse response function. An assessment of the SAR processor performance is derived by computing the one-dimensional ground range and azimuth resolutions of the simulated calibrators. Finally, various plots and numerical results are shown in order to illustrate impulse responses under clutter and no clutter assumptions.