In a simulated synthetic aperture radar SAR, a terrain elevation model is provided. A phase component of the simulated SAR data is computed by determining a distance between incremental terrain points and a simulated SAR platform modulo the wavelength. The amplitude component is computed in the following manner. The terrain elevation model is rotated about a vertical axis to present terrain strips extending perpendicular to the assumed direction of travel of the SAR platform. Points distributed along the terrain strips are projected into an illumination plane perpendicular to the assumed SAR signal and into an image plane perpendicular to the illumination plane. Brightness values and areas in shadow from the simulated SAR signal are determined by the projection into the illumination plane and brightness values are accumulated into an accumulation register corresponding to incremental pixel areas of the image plane by interpolating the brightness of illumination values in accordance with the incremental pixel areas of the image plane.
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