A Two-Way Split-Step Wavelet Scheme for Tropospheric Long-Range Propagation in Various Environments

Abstract

In the context of improving the dimensioning of observation and telecommunication, the characterization of the propagation canal is very important. Thus, accurate models of propagation phenomenona in their environment and above a rough surface (maritime or terrestrial) are of major interest for many applications (such as radar, communications, and teledetection). To provide solutions to this problem, in this paper, we propose a fast, memory-efficient, and accurate asymptotic method for 2D tropospheric propagation for a large band of frequency that accounts for relief, as well as ground composition and roughness. This latter is a two-way split-step wavelet scheme with an intrinsic stopping criterion. For overseas propagation, roughness effects are considered through a hybrid method. A complete theoretical comparison with SSF in terms of memory and time efficiency is proposed. Simulations in various environments (ground, sea, and snow), as well as different frequencies (UHF, S, and X-band) are performed to validate the method and highlight its advantages. To highlight the interest of the developed methodology, this latter is applied to different real-life applications, such as the prediction of radar coverage and the optimization of an antenna location.

Keywords

• tropospheric propagation
• split-step method
• wavelet
• rough surface
• atmospheric duct