Radio Wave Reflectance for an Anisotropic and Inhomogeneous Forest Layer

In this paper, the forest medium is described as a transversely inhomogeneous uniaxial anisotropic dielectric. In order to take into consideration the surface of ground, an impedance boundary condition is assigned at the bottom of the dielectric slab. In this way established uniaxial anisotropy of the effective complex dielectric constant corresponds to the predominantly vertical orientation of tree elements. Reflections of horizontally and vertically polarized plane waves from the multilayered inhomogeneous forest slab are considered separately because of the ordinary and extraordinary waves propagate independently in uniaxial partial layers under study. The numerical results show difference in reflectance of horizontally and vertically polarized waves in comparison with the isotropic forest slab model.