Full wave physical models of nonspecular scattering in irregular stratified media

Abstract

A physical interpretation is given of each term in the full-wave expansion of the vertically or horizontally polarized electromagnetic fields scattered by irregular stratified media. These solutions provide a basis for the construction of physical models of nonspecular scatter in complex, irregular, layered structures. The full wave solutions involve a pair of nonspecular reflection scattering coefficients and a pair of nonspecular transmission scattering coefficients that reduce to the familiar Fresnel reflection and transmission coefficients for the specular case. The full-wave solutions are shown to satisfy the reciprocity and duality relationships in electromagnetic theory, and they are invariant to coordinate transformations. The relationships between the full-wave solution, the high-frequency physical optics solution, and the low-frequency perturbation solution are demonstrated. The analysis is relevant to problems of communication in irregular stratified media and to problems of remote sensing. >