Numerical study of radar backscattering from sea surface contaminated by oil

This paper presents a numerical simulation of the radar backscattering from oil spills on ocean surfaces. This paper presents a numerical simulation of the radar backscattering from oil spills on ocean surfaces. At first, a one-dimensionally rough sea surface is numerically generated with an ocean height spectrum for a given wind velocity. A two-layered medium is generated by adding a thin oil layer on the rough sea surface. The electric fields scattered from the contaminated sea surface by oil are computed using the method of moments (MoM). Then, the backscattering coefficients are statistically obtained using N independent samples for each oil-spilled surface using the Monte Carlo technique for various conditions of surface roughness, oil-layer thickness, frequency, polarization and incidence angle. The numerical simulation results are compared with theoretical models for clean sea surfaces. The reduction of the backscattering coefficients due to oil-spills on sea surfaces has been analyzed based on numerical simulation results.