Scattering from a 2D sea fractal surface: fractal analysis of the scattered signal

Abstract

For first part of the work see ibid., vol.50, no.4, p.426-34 (2002). We analytically demonstrate that the electromagnetic (EM) sea scattered signal retains certain fractal properties of the sea surface. Starting from the expression of the scattering coefficient derived in the first part of the work, we show theoretically that the fractal dimension of the in phase and quadrature components of the EM signal scattered from a sea fractal surface is linearly related to the fractal dimension of the sea surface. This result holds under the hypothesis of Kirchhoff approximation. Bearing in mind that the sea fractal dimension gives a measure of the degree of surface irregularity, we can exploit this result to make a remote estimation of the surface roughness through the fractal analysis of the scattered signal. This is a very interesting result and it could be successfully used in remote sensing applications for classification, target detection, sea surface traffic monitoring, sea current analysis, oil slick and ship wake recognition, pollution analysis etc.