A model for non-Rayleigh sea echo

Abstract

A mathematical model for non-Rayleigh microwave sea echo is developed which describes explicitly the dependence of statistical properties of the radar cross section on the area of sea surface illuminated by the radar. In addition to the first probability distribution of the scattered radiation, its temporal and spatial correlation functions are also considered. It is shown that, in general, these correlation functions decay on at least two scales, the second, non-Rayleigh, contributions being strongly dependent on the properties of a "single scatterer." Predictions of the model are found to be in qualitative agreement with existing experimental data. A new class of probability distributions, the " <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</tex> -distributions," is introduced, which may prove useful for fitting such data.