Evaluation of SPECRAY EM. A program package for radar signature calculations and radar simulations

SPECRAY EM, with complementary software modules, is a tool for calculation of radar cross section and simulation of electromagnetic scattering in synthetic environments. The software is developed by the French company OKTAL SE in cooperation with ONERA. There is today a great need in Sweden for this kind of tool, e.g. for signature reduction of craft and vehicles, or for evaluation of, for instance, new sensor concepts for missile seekers and SAR-sensors for UAVs. This report presents the evaluation of SPECRAY EM that has been carried out by FOI during the summer of 2004. The software is based on ray tracing technology and uses geometrical optics in combination with physical optics for calculating electromagnetic scattering. As opposed to the tools available in Sweden today, SPECRAY EM is capable of handling bistatic scattering, dielectric material, range gating, monostatic ground clutter, doppler and, antenna diagrams. SPECRAY EM has been validated in a number of generic test cases and has in all important cases given correct results. The lasting impression is that the software is very competent and has great potential.