Full wave solutions for electromagnetic scattering and depolarization in irregular stratified media

Abstract

Using the complete expansions of the fields and imposing the exact boundary conditions at the interfaces of an irregular stratified medium, Maxwell's equations are transformed into a rigorous set of coupled first‐order differential equations for the wave amplitudes. This full wave approach is applied to a large class of propagation problems. Since these solutions account for specular point as well as diffuse scattering in a unified self‐consistent manner, it is not necessary to apply a hybrid physical optics‐perturbation approach to problems of rough surface scattering. The full wave solutions satisfy realizability, duality and reciprocity relationships in electromagnetic theory. They are invariant to coordinate transformations.