Forward Electromagnetic Scattering Models For Sea Ice - Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on

Recent advances in forward modeling of the electromagnetic scattering properties of sea ice are presented. In particular, the principal results include the following: 1) approximate calculations of electromagnetic scattering from multilayer random media with rough interfaces, based on the distorted Born approximation and radiative transfer (RT) theory; 2) comprehensive theory of the effective complex permittivity of sea ice based on rigorous bounds in the quasi-static case and strong fluctuation theory in the weakly scattering regime; 3) rigorous analysis of the Helmholtz equation and its solutions for idealized sea ice models, which has led in the one dimensional (1-D) case to nonlinear generalizations of classical theorems in Fourier analysis. The forward models considered here incorporate many detailed features of the sea ice system and compare well with experimental data. The results have advanced the general theory of scattering of electromagnetic waves from complex media as well as homogenization theory, which relates bulk properties of composite media to their microstructural characteristics. Furthermore, the results have direct application to microwave remote sensing and serve as Manuscript received April 7, 1998; revised June 5, 1998. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, which provided funding for the Sea Ice Electromagnetics Accelerated Research Initiative. The work of K. M. Golden was supported by ONR Grants N00014-93-10 141 and N00014-94-10958 and NSF Grants DMS-9 622 367 and OPP-9 725 038. The work of M. Cheney was supported by ONR Grants N00014-93-1-0048 and N00014-96-1-0670 and an NSF Faculty Award for Women in Science and Engineering DMS-9 023 630. The work of D. Isaacson was supported by ONR Grants N00014-93-1-0048 and N00014-96-1-0670. The work of J. A. Kong and K.-H. Ding was supported by ONR Grants N00014-89-J-1107 and N00014-92-J-4098. The work of A. K. Fung was supported by ONR Grant N00014-96-1-0517. The work of S. V. Nghiem was supported by the Office of Naval Research through an agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The work of J. Sylvester, D. P. Winebrenner, and T. C. Grenfell was supported by ONR Grants N00014-89-J-3132, N00014-90-J1369, N00014-93-0295, N00014-96-1-0266, and N00014-89-J-1140, and NSF Grant DMS-9 123 757. K. M. Golden is with the Department of Mathematics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). M. Cheney and D. Isaacson are with the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180 USA. K.-H. Ding and J. A. Kong are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. A. K. Fung is with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Texas, Arlington, TX 76019 USA. T. C. Grenfell is with the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 USA. S. V. Nghiem is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 USA. J. Sylvester is with the Department of Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 USA. D. P. Winebrenner is with the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 0196-2892(98)06383-9. the basis for inverse algorithms for reconstructing the physical properties of sea ice from scattering data.