An Efficient Way for Studying the EM Scattering From a Marine Environment With Multiple Ships

A reliable and efficient way is proposed for investigating the electromagnetic (EM) scattering from a large marine environment containing multiple vessels. To enhance the computational efficiency, an improved method is proposed based on the facet-based simplified small slope approximation to calculate the scattering field from the sea surface. In addition, the overall sea surface is decomposed into noncoupled and coupled regions. Then, this letter uses a combined method based on the geometrical optics/physics optical method and the physical theory of diffraction method for studying the scattering field from the targets and the coupling scattering field between the targets and the sea surface in the coupled region. Numerical results show that the proposed method has advantages of higher efficiency and good accuracy compared with the original EM model and it can be applied to simulate synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of a marine environment with ships.