Bistatic radar imaging of the marine environment - Part II: Simulation and results analysis

We present a bistatic, polarimetric, and real aperture marine radar simulator (MaRS) producing pseudoraw radar signals. The simulation takes the main elements of the environment into account (sea temperature, salinity, and wind speed). Realistic sea surfaces are generated using a two-scale model on a semideterministic basis to incorporate the presence of ship wakes. Then, the radar acquisition chain (antennas, modulation, and polarization) is modeled, as well as the movements of the sensors, on which uncertainties can be introduced, and ship wakes. The pseudoraw temporal signals delivered by MaRS are further processed using, for instance, bistatic synthetic aperture beamforming. The scene itself represents the sea surface as well as ship wakes. The main points covered here are the scene discretization, the ship wake modeling, and the computational cost aspects. We also present images simulated in various monostatic and bistatic configurations and discuss the results. This paper follows its companion paper, where much of the theory used here is recalled and developed in detail.