Backscattering Properties of Multi-Scale Rough Surfaces

In this paper a novel multi-scale roughness description is presented and its impact on surface backscattering is investigated. The analysed rough surfaces are synthesised by exploiting a Karhunen-Lo6ve decomposition of 1/ f random processes in terms of wavelet bases. For these surfaces, relevant roughness parameters are not traditional quantities like the height profile std (s) and the profile correlation length (l) but they are a new set of parameters related to the surface multi-scale properties. Besides, the paper investigates the possibility of matching the multi-scale roughness description with e.m. asymptotic models such as the Integral Equation Method (IEM). Under appropriate hypothesis, it is shown that the IEM model can be adapted to the multi-scale roughness description and a sensitive analysis of copolarised backscattering coefficients to relevant roughness parameters is carried out in the case of one dimensional surfaces.