Modelization of the Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves FROM the Ocean Surface

Abstract

In this paper, two models for the solution of the electromagnetic bistatic scattering from sea surface are suggested. A rigorous formalism leading to weakly singular integral equations is presented, as well as the surface impedance approximation for low penetrable media and the beam simulation method to synthesize incident beams with arbitrary size. This rigorous integral method is used to test first order approximations, and it is shown that the Small Slope Approximation is very accurate in predicting the scattering crosssection from the high spatial frequencies of the sea surface. This result led us to suggest an improvement of the classical two-scale model, consisting in replacing the small perturbation theory by the small slope approximation. This change allows the cut-off spatial frequency to be shifted so that the use of geometrical Optics is restricted to the large scales.