CUDA-based four-path method with application to the EM scattering of a two-layer canopy

The long-term goal of this paper is to develop a robust simulator to study the EM scattering from vegetation. In an effort to overwhelm the intensive computational burden results from large sampling numbers, we decided to utilize the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which has been greatly developed in recent years. In this paper, Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) is combined with the four-path method to predict the EM scattering properties from scatterers which are sampled by using the Monte Carlo method in a two-layer canopy model. Obviously, a speedup of 77.8 times could be readily obtained in comparison with the original serial algorithm on a Core(TM) i5 CPU with the help of a GTS250 GPU as a coprocessor.