Real-time Simulation of Radio Frequency (RF) Signal Returns from Complex Targets and Backgrounds

Verus Research proposes to develop a real-time radio-frequency environment generator suitable for hardware in the loop (HWIL) testing of RF imaging / guidance & navigation systems, using a combination of high-performance Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) hardware and software models to create a real-time simulation environment. The simulation models will utilize the NVIDIA OptiX ray-tracing engine for generation of ray-paths within the complex scene, combined with novel methods for cluttered background return and backscatter from target models using Physical Optics (PO) implemented on GPU. Using a hardware architecture centered around the GPU will allow for simplicity and expansion to GPU clusters to meet the required real-time processing speed.