Scattering and transmission of waves in multiple random rough surfaces: Energy conservation studies with the second order small perturbation method

Abstract

Energy conservation is an important consideration in wave scattering and transmission from random rough surfaces and is particularly important in passive microwave remote sensing. In this paper, we study energy conservation in scattering from layered random rough surfaces using the second order small perturbation method (SPM2). SPM2 includes both first order incoherent scattering and a second order correction to the coherent fields. They are combined to compute the total reflected and transmitted powers, as a sum of integrations over wavenumber kx, in which each integration includes the surface power spectra of a rough interface weighted by an emission kernel function (assuming the roughness of each interface is uncorrelated). We calculate the corresponding kernel functions which are the power spectral densities for one-dimensional (1D) surfaces in 2D scattering problems and examine numerical results for the cases of 2 rough interfaces and 51 rough interfaces. Because it is known that the SPM when evaluated to second order conserves energy, and it can be applied to second order for arbitrary surface power spectra, energy conservation can be shown to be satisfied for each value of kx in the kernel functions. The numerical examples show that energy conservation is obeyed for any dielectric contrast, any layer configuration and interface, and arbitrary roughness spectra. The values of reflected or transmitted powers predicted, however, are accurate only to second order in small surface roughness.