Transformation of Rice’s small perturbation solution for rough surface scattering into the high frequency reciprocal physical and geometric optics solutions

Abstract

A step by step transformation of the low frequency small height and slope perturbation solution into the high frequency reciprocal and dual, physical and geometrical optic solutions is presented. The familiar Kirchhoff approximations for the fields impressed by the incident plane wave upon the rough surfaces results in nonreciprocal solutions. It is shown that the surface element scattering coefficients based on the Kirchhoff approximations agree with the corresponding reciprocal physical optics solutions only at the stationary phase, specular points on the rough surfaces. While the Kirchhoff approximations and physical optics approximations are based on the characterization of the surface fields by Fresnel reflection coefficients, the corresponding surface element scatter coefficient derived for the small perturbation solution and the full wave solutions are based on the imposition of boundary conditions for the tangential components of the electric and magnetic fields. A flow graph schematically depicting the relationships between these solutions for the scattered fields is also presented.