An Adaptive Irregular Grid Generation Method for Scattering Simulation of Electrically Large Terrains

Abstract

This communication provides a novel adaptive irregular grid model (AIGM) to improve the scattering simulation efficiency of electrically large terrains. This model distinguishes the steep and flat regions of the measured topographic point cloud models by a threshold. To determine the optimal threshold, we present the height gradient as the criterion to describe the topographic undulation. The optimal threshold is located at the inflection point of the curve describing topographic similarity in the range of height gradient. This generated AIGM can reduce the grid quantity and maintain consistency with the original point cloud model. It is also valuable in the popular coherent and incoherent (C&I) scattering model of global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R). In this communication, the coherent component can be expressed by a simple product of the electric field of the conductor grid, the characteristic function of roughness, and the Fresnel reflection coefficient. The incoherent component comes from the diffuse scattering simulated by the integral equation method (IEM). Compared with the traditional solution to C&I scattering by using the Kirchhoff approximation (KA), the modified C&I model has a more extensive application. The precision of the AIGM-based-C&I model is verified by traditional physical optics (PO). The excellent simulation efficiency of the AIGM-based-C&I model is also demonstrated.