A Pseudospectral Time-Domain Simulator for Large-Scale Half-Space Electromagnetic Scattering and Radar Sounding Applications

Abstract

This paper describes a 2D Pseudospectral Time-Domain (PSTD) full-wave simulator for solving large-scale half-space electromagnetic scattering problems with the application of radar sounding of planetary subsurfaces. New domain designs are developed to efficiently simulate 2D scattering of half-space media for normal and oblique incidence from arbitrary wave sources. The simulated 2D bistatic scattering radar cross width (RCW) is compared with the analytical solutions of random rough surfaces with various choices of grid sampling resolution. The PSTD solver is applied to a passive sounding problem with SAR focusing. An example of using the solver is shown for emulating three-dimensional large-scale radar sounding problems with cross-track surface and subsurface scattering. The PSTD solver is both memory-efficient and accurate for sounding applications, and particularly useful to simulate large-scale radar sounding returns and SAR focused imagery.