ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel formulation for scattering from one-dimensional (1D) rough surface problem has been presented. The formulation is based on the representation of the scattering field in spectral domain with an unknown spectral coefficient which is solved by applying Taylor series and Fourier Transforms techniques. It is also shown that forward–backward (FB) acceleration technique can be adapted to the spectral formulation to improve the effectiveness in a limited region of convergence. The obtained results are compared with the conventional method of moments (MoM) and the limitations of the formulation are analyzed in detail.