Phong-like Lighting for MMW Radar Simulation

Abstract

Radar simulation involves the computation of a radar response based on the terrain's normalized radar cross section (RCS). In the past different models have been proposed for modeling the normalized RCS. While being accurate in most cases they lack intuitive handling. We present a novel approach for computing the mean normalized radar cross section for use in millimeter wave radar simulations based on Phong lighting. This allows us to model radar power return in an intuitive way using categories of diffuse and specular reflections. The model is computational more efficient than previous approaches while using only few parameters. Furthermore, we give example setups for different types of terrain. We show that our technique can accurately model data output from other approaches as well as real world data.