GPU-Accelerated Computation of EM Scattering of a Time-Evolving Oceanic Surface Model II: EM Scattering of Actual Oceanic Surface

Abstract

Based on marine environmental factors of different sea areas, a high-performance sea clutter time series modeling algorithm for the real sea surface is developed to study the amplitude mean and Doppler spectrum characteristics of sea clutter. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) data set (ERA-Interim) and ESA’s soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) data set are utilized to establish databases of different marine environmental factors. Combined with the mixed spectrum model, the geometric fine structure of wind-driven sea surface with swell superposition is established by using the double-superposition method (DSM) and comprehensively considering small-scale capillary ripples, large-scale gravity waves and swell. A triangle facet-based sea clutter series modeling algorithm is developed, in which the quasi-specular scattering based on a triangle and the scattering based on gravity wave modulation capillary spectrum are calculated, respectively, and compared with the measured results. For high-resolution radar, dynamic sea surface modeling and sea clutter calculation are very time consuming. In this paper, the Tesla K80 GPU manufactured by NVIDIA in Santa Clara, Computed Unified Device architecture (CUDA) high-performance parallel technology and some optimization strategies are adopted to improve the efficiency of sea clutter modeling. The results can be used to analyze the distribution characteristics of marine factors, the average amplitude and Doppler characteristics of sea clutter in different sea areas.