Scattering Of Electromagnetic Waves From A Periodic Surface With Random Roughness

The scattering of electromagnetic waves from a randomly perturbed periodic surface is formulated by the Extended Boundary Condition (EBC) method and solved by the small perturbation method (SPM). The scattering from periodic surface is solved exactly and this solution is used in the SPM to solve for the surface currents and scattered fields up to the second order. The random perturbation is modeled as a Gaussian random process. The theoretical results are illustrated by calculating the bistatic and backscattering coefficients. It is shown that as the correlation length of the random roughness increases, the bistatic scattering pattern of the scattered fields show several beams associated with each Bragg diffraction direction of the periodic surface. When the correlation length becomes smaller, then the shape of the beams become broader. The results obtained using the EBC/SPM method is also compared with the results obtained using the Kirchhoff approximation. It is shown that the Kirchhoff approximation results show quite a good agreement with EBC/SPM method results for the hh and vv polarized backscattering coefficients for small angles of incidence. However, the Kirchhoff approximation does not give depolarized returns in the backscattering direction whereas the results obtained using the EBC ,'SPM method give significiant depolarized returns when the incident direction is not perpendicular to the row direction of the periodic surface.