Radio wave propagation along mixed paths through a four-layered model of rain forest: an analytic approach

Abstract

This paper presents a novel full-wave analysis of the radio waves that are excited from a dipole antenna located in the trunk layer and propagate inside a four-layered forest medium. The dyadic Green's functions for the four-layered geometry are applied first to derive the integral expression of the electric fields. The closed form of the electric fields is then obtained by using the quasi-static approximation, saddle-point technique, and branch-cut integrations in the complex plane and, hence, expressed in terms of direct waves, multiple reflected waves, and lateral waves. Two kinds of images, i.e., the quasi-dynamic and complex images, are considered in the integration in the complex plane. Among those waves excited by a dipole antenna in the four-layered medium, it is shown theoretically and numerically that the lateral wave along the upper-side air-canopy interface plays a role of dominant modes. The propagation mechanism of other lateral waves due to the air-canopy, canopy-trunk, and trunk-ground interfaces is also discussed and analyzed so as to gain an insight into the wave characteristics. Transmission losses of the lateral waves are calculated numerically.