Backscatter sensitivity to the directionality and power parameter of a two-dimensional scattering model

The authors derive and examine the dependence of the nadir backscatter on the fundamental parameters of a model of the ocean surface. These dependences indicate how accurate the estimates of the surface state can be. While the surface roughness provides the dominant effect in determining the scattering coherency, the choice of modeling the surface as uni-directional or isotropic (or somewhere in between) is critical, as is the value of the power parameter of the k^-p power-law spectrum. These sensitivities are found using physical optics; geometrical optics does not reveal them