Numerical studies of backscattering enhancement of electromagnetic waves from two-dimensional random rough surfaces with the forward-backward/novel spectral acceleration method

The forward-backward method with a novel spectral acceleration algorithm (F B/NSA) has been shown to be a highly efficient O(N-tot) iterative method of moments, where N-tot is the total number of unknowns to be solved, for the computation of electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering from both one-dimensio nal and two-dimensional, (2-D) rough surfaces. The efficiency of the method makes studies of backscattering enhancement from moderately rough impedanc e surfaces at large incident angles tractable. Variations in the characteri stics of backscattering enhancement with incident angle, surface impedance, polarization, and surface statistics are investigated by use of the 2-D FB /NSA method combined with parallel computing techniques. The surfaces consi dered are Gaussian random processes with an isotropic Gaussian spectrum and root-mean-square surface heights and slopes ranging from 0.5 lambda to lam bda and from 0.5 to 1.0, respectively, where lambda is the EM wavelength in free space. Incident angles ranging from normal incidence up to 70 degrees are considered in this study. It is found that backscattering enhancement, depends strongly on all parameters of interest. (C) 2001 Optical Society o f America.