Electromagnetic Scattering Analysis of the Sea Surface with Single Breaking Waves

Abstract

A new electromagnetic (EM) scattering model of the sea surface with single breaking waves is proposed based on the high-frequency method in this paper. At first, realistic breaking wave sequences are obtained by solving the fluid equations which are simplified. Then, the rough sea surface is established using the linear filtering method. A new wave model is obtained by combining breaking waves with rough sea surface using a 3D coordinate transformation. Finally, the EM scattering features of the sea surface with breaking waves are studied by using shooting and bouncing rays and the physical theory of diffraction (SBR-PTD). It is found that the structure that is similar to a dihedral corner reflector between the breaking wave and rough sea surface exhibits multiple scattering, which leads to the sea-spike phenomenon that the scattering result of horizontal (HH) polarization is larger than that of vertical (VV) polarization, especially at low-grazing-angle (LGA) incidents with upwind. The sea-spike phenomenon is also closely related to the location of strong scattering.