Fast radar signal simulator for SAR ground penetrating applications

In the last years, in order to investigate the distribution of water in the upper part of the Matianpsilas crust, two different instruments have been developed, and operative up to now: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) and SHA allow RADar (SHARAD). Both the instruments are low frequency (1.8-5 MHz for MARSIS and 20 MHz for SHARAD) Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) in altimeter configuration which use the synthetic aperture technique. In this work will be presented an efficient procedure to detect the possible presence of specific subsurface features using the available surface topography data. In particular a fast radar signal simulator approach, designed in order to reduce the large computational time that represents the greatest application limit to this detection procedure will be presented. After a theoretical discussion of this technique and its validity, an example of application is presented using the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data.