PROPAGATION FACTOR AND PATH LOSS SIMULATION RESULTS FOR TWO ROUGH SURFACE REFLECTION COEFFICIENTS APPLIED TO THE MICROWAVE DUCTING PROPAGATION OVER THE SEA

The performance assessment of maritime microwave communications and radar systems requires accounting simultaneously for the non-homogeneous propagation medium over the sea and the rough sea surface scattering. The tropospheric ducting, speciflc for over water propagation, is one of the most di-cult to treat propagation mechanisms. The proposed work combines a recently published in the literature phase correction, responsible for the shadowing efiects, to the Ament rough surface re∞ection coe-cient and the Parabolic Equation method (as implemented in the Advanced Propagation Model) to simulate the microwave propagation over the sea under evaporation duct conditions. Propagation factor and path loss results calculated for phase-corrected Ament, non-phase-corrected Ament and the other widely used, Miller-Brown, rough surface re∞ection coe-cient are compared and discussed. The main efiects from the accounting of the shadowing result in the shift of the interference minima and maxima of the propagation factor, changes in the path loss pattern and destruction of the trapping property of the duct.