A Rapid SAR Image Simulation Method for Ship Wakes Coupled With Sea Waves Using Fluid Velocity Potential

In simulating synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ship wakes, dynamic wake modeling often uses the linear superposition of sea waves and Kelvin wakes. This method, however, overlooks the alterations in sea surface roughness caused by the nonlinear interaction between waves and wakes, thus failing to accurately capture real sea surface variations. In this letter, we introduce a rapid SAR image simulation technique for ship wakes that incorporates sea waves using fluid velocity potential. Firstly, the computational domain and ship grid are constructed, with the grid scale tailored to the ship's surface structure to satisfy boundary conditions for efficient fluid velocity potential calculations. Next, to enhance boundary calculation accuracy, we employ the Taylor expansion boundary element method to swiftly resolve both steady and unsteady velocity potential components. Additionally, our approach not only depicts the interaction between sea waves and ship wakes but also facilitates the simulation analysis of various sea condition parameters. By treating the ship wake as noise and comparing images containing only background sea waves with the simulation images, the results show that the accuracy of the proposed approach is 0.2 SSIM higher than that of the linear superposition method, and the speed is 3 hours faster than that of CFD method.