Wave-Driven Marine Boundary Layers: Implications for Atmospheric Electromagnetics and Ocean Acoustics

摘要

The description of electromagnetic propagation through the marine atmospheric boundary layer is considerably more complex than through the terrestrial boundary layer. Contributing to the complexity are refractive ducts as well as the moving wave-roughened sea surface. A significant issue for propagation in marine environment is the reproducible tendency of models to overestimate the signal's intensity at the receiver (Barrios and Patterson (2002)). Such discrepancy, in turn, leads to a uncertainty in estimating a number of variables with practical importance, among them being the distance to an object detected by radar and its velocity. This error is likely due to ignoring or incorrectly describing the physical mechanisms responsible for signal degradation. The long-term goal of this effort is to advance our quantitative understanding of the physical factors influencing the signal propagation in the marine environment, essential for detection, tracking, communication and guidance applications.