Numerical study on the statistics of the phase in backscattered signals from time-evolving sea surfaces

The linear and Creamer sea surface models are combined with the first-order small slope approximation (SSA1) technique and the method of ordered multiple interactions (MOMI) to study the statistics of the phase difference in backscattered signals from time-evolving sea surfaces. The impact of sea surface models and electromagnetic (EM) scattering computation methods on the backscattering signal phase is investigated. Numerical results are compared with theoretical distributions to validate the models and computational procedures proposed. Good agreements between simulated statistics and the theoretical counterparts demonstrate that the sea clutter returns are essentially joint Gaussian distributed on short time scales.