Electromagnetic Scattering of Randomly Rough Soil Surfaces Based on Numerical Solutions of Maxwell Equations in Three-Dimensional Simulations Using a Hybrid UV/PBTG/SMCG Method

A hybrid UV/PBTG/SMCG method is developed to accelerate the solution of NMM3D for 3-D electromagnetic wave scattering by random rough soil surfaces. It takes only 1.5 min using 16 processors on a cluster of NSF TeraGrid to compute 3-D solution of Maxwell equations of 8 by 8 square wavelengths. With the improved computational efficiency, we computed results using areas up to 32 by 32 square wavelengths. With the larger surface area, we were able to compute cases with larger rms heights up to 8 cm at SMAP radar frequency of 1.26 GHz that corresponds to kh = 2.28. New results computed include the cross-polarization. The five tests on the accuracy of results were performed: convergence with realizations, convergence with discrete samplings, convergence with sample surface sizes, energy conservation for each realization, and reciprocity for each realization. The numerical results show that for a single realization VH = HV within 0.5 dB in the backscattering direction showing that reciprocity is obeyed. Results were compared with experimental data, and both co-polarization and cross-polarization were in good agreements with experimental data.