dSARsim - Dummy Synthetic Aperture Radar Simulator
What is dSARsim?
dSARsim means Dummy Synthetic Aperture Radar Simulator. If you don't know what a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is, it's very probable that you don't need this little software and you can stop reading :)
dSARsim pseudo-simulations are carried out taking into account only the scene geometry and by following simple rules. Radiometry is NOT simulated. The result is a grayscale scene where it is possible to visually discriminate the typical geometrical effects seen in SAR images, e.g. layover, shadowing and foreshortening, and the number of main scatterers for each pixel of the output image.
Language: python v3.x
| License: |  |
Why use dSARsim?
dSARsim is suited for didactic purposes. It's a small piece of code (three files) that everyone can install and use to have an idea of how the parameters of SAR geometry affect the output image. That's it.
For purposes different from generating fast pseudo-simulations in a simple way (e.g. for academic or industrial research) there are several commercial software that do the job and also valid free tools (e.g. the SENTINEL-1 Toolbox and PolSARpro developed and freely distributed by ESA).
Resources
| Where you can get dSARsim |
| How to use dSARsim and a brief explanation of the pseudo-simulation principles |
| A little gallery of output examples obtained with different SAR viewing configurations |
History
...maybe you're curious
Some months ago I wanted to learn python and I chose this application as first exercise. During my Ph.D. I developed something similar in C++ for testing SAR visibility in a mountainous area. I had nice memories about that piece of code, so I wanted to redevelop and improve it starting from zero. The result is a three-file command line software, which actually improves its old version... although it's surely slower... but ok, life is made of tradeoffs, isn't it? :)