Numerical Investigation on the Spatial Ergodicity of Ocean Radar Scattering Using MLSD-SMCG Method

This paper numerically investigates the spatial ergodicity of radar scattering from randomly rough ocean surface. Based on the accurate full-wave multi-level steepest decent-sparse matrix canonical grid (MLSD-SMCG) method and Monte Carlo simulation, we simulate the L-band normalized radar scattering coefficients from one-dimensional (I-D) rough ocean surfaces with different radar illumination sizes. According to the simulation results, it is found that: For the scattering angle less than 85°, the normalized bistatic radar scattering coefficient from ocean surface with radar illumination size no less than
$16\lambda$
has good spatial ergodicity. Also, the emissivities from ocean surfaces with sizes exceeding
$64\lambda$
manifest spatial ergodicity if the measurement accuracy of emissivity is less than the order of magnitude of 10
⁻⁴
.