On the Development of a Second-Order Bistatic Radar Cross Section of the Ocean Surface: A High-Frequency Result for a Finite Scattering Patch

The development of a model for the second-order bistatic high-frequency (HF) radar cross section on an ocean surface patch remote from the transmitter and receiver is addressed. A new approach is taken that allows a direct comparison with existing monostatic cross sections for finite regions of the ocean surface. The derivation starts with a general expression for the bistatically received second-order electric field in which the scattering surface is assumed to be of small height and slope. The source field is taken to be that of a vertically polarized dipole, and it is assumed that the ocean surface can be described, as is usually done, by a Fourier series in which the coefficients are zero-mean Gaussian random variables. Subsequently, a bistatic cross section of the surface, normalized to patch area, is derived. The result is verified by the following two means: 1) the complete form of the bistatic HF radar cross section in backscattering case is shown to contain an earlier monostatic result that has, itself, been used extensively in radio oceanography applications; and 2) the bistatic electromagnetic coupling coefficient is shown to reduce exactly to the monostatic result when backscattering geometry is imposed. The model is also depicted and discussed based on simulated data