This dissertation describes the design and implementation of a radar simulator called Sarsim2. The radar simulator was originally developed to produce synthetic range profiles (SRPs) of complex aircraft models. It was then expanded and upgraded to generate simulated synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. Over the last few years a substantial amount of work has been carried out by the Radar Remote Sensing Group (RRSG) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to produce SRPs of aircraft targets using an 1-Band search radar of Reutech Systems. The high range resolution that can be obtained from SRP processing makes it feasible to extract characteristic features from a profile obtained from an aircraft. The ultimate aim of producing SRPs is to use these extracted features for non-cooperative target recognition (NCTR) , i.e. to be able to identify an aircraft type from the echo signal received by the radar. The radar simulator was written to produce SRPs of aircraft models, which could then be used to investigate the feasibility of various aircraft-identification algorithms. The stepped-frequency processing required to obtain SRPs of aircraft targets has initiated further research in the RRSG into more efficient stepped-frequency processing techniques, and the radar simulator has been used extensively to generate simulated data . The RRSG group is also actively involved with SAR processing techniques, and the radar simulator has been invaluable in providing necessary simulation data to test various processing algorithms . One of the main objectives of this simulator was to have an easy-to-use graph ical interface, which can show results in real-time . This requirement makes it necessary to find some way of reducing the required computation. The solution implemented may be called VYSIWIC (what you see is what is calculated). This means that the data is only calculated to a resolution depending on the screen resolution. Only when the data is saved to disk will it be calculated and written with the required sampling rate.

Includes bibliographical references.