The analytical description of the scattering of electromagnetic fields from the sea surface is an old but still open problem. Initially devoted to removing the sea clutter from radar acquisitions, sea scattering models gained growing interest as instruments to investigate the sea physical characteristics and today new challenges call scientists to enrich their models with the presence of ships on the sea surface. The opportunity of remotely retrieving information about geometrical and electrical properties of the sea surfaces, the possibility of using radar satellites to monitor ships in oceans and coastal waters as well as the efficient analysis of microwave links in marine environment depend on the capability of modeling the interaction of the electromagnetic field with the sea surfaces. Such an analysis has to account for the involved dependence of the scattered field on incident wavelength, surface roughness and dielectric properties, polarization, look angle, and so on. In addition, time variance and hydrodynamic wave -wave interactions affect the power distribution in sea scattering phenomena.

Chapter Contents:

• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.2 Sea surface models
• 2.2.1 Spectral representation
• 2.2.2 First order representation
• 2.3 Electromagnetic scattering from the sea surface
• 2.4 Scattering models for a ship
• 2.4.1 RCS estimation of a canonical ship
• 2.4.1.1 Roughness parameters computation
• 2.4.1.2 Retrieval of the dielectric constant of the sea water
• 2.4.1.3 Unknown parameters estimation
• 2.4.2 RCS distribution
• 2.4.3 Uncertainty budget analysis
• 2.4.4 Model inaccuracy and validation
• References

Inspec keywords: spaceborne radar; marine radar; electromagnetic wave scattering; radar clutter

Other keywords: power distribution; dielectric properties; sea physical characteristics; incident wavelength; microwave links; wave interactions; time variance; radar acquisitions; radar scattering; coastal waters; sea clutter; surface roughness; sea scattering models; sea surface; electromagnetic fields; hydrodynamic wave; marine environment; radar satellites

Subjects: Radar equipment, systems and applications; Radiowave propagation; Electromagnetic compatibility and interference