Open RCS: An Open-Source Platform for Numerical Evaluation of Radar Cross Section of 3D Targets

Radar cross section (RCS) is an essential measure for developing state-of-the-art military equipment, such as aircrafts, ships, and armored vehicles, since it directly reflects how easily they can be identified by radar systems. The most commonly used softwares to estimate such measure are proprietary. In addition to the costs of acquisition, building the platforms on which these simulations are performed can result in even more costs, as their hardware requirements can be stricter than standard computers. Considering the RCS field of study, researchers do not always have access to this equipment and software, which could be an obstacle to the advancement and progress of this field. This scenario shows the importance of research initiatives, in the RCS field of study, to implement a computational solution that could be more accessible for both research and educational purposes. In order to fill this gap, this work presents Open RCS, an open-source platform for RCS simulation, written in Python, so that it can be widely distributed and evolve in a community way, given the capillarity of this programming language in academia.