Scattering From Inhomogeneous Dielectric Cylinders With Finite Length.

The electromagnetic scattering by a dielectric cylinder of finite length is important in many applications, particularly for microwave remote sensing of vegetated terrain. Yet, not only a unified analytical solution is still elusive in providing the scattering cross sections but also other important aspects, such as the phase of the scattering amplitude function, energy conservation, and reciprocity relation, have been scantly touched in the literature. The treatment of a dielectric inhomogeneous cylinder of finite length brings forth new challenges. Taking on such challenges is the focus of this paper. The main plan of attack is to extend the virtual partition method, which is a T-matrix-based semi-analytical model, that we have previously proposed to treat scattering from a homogeneous dielectric cylinder of finite length, to the inhomogeneous cases. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated numerically, including: 1) high-fidelity prediction of the copolarized and cross-polarized cross sections for arbitrary bistatic scattering configuration; 2) high-fidelity predictions of the phase of the scattering amplitude function; 3) verification of energy conservation; and 4) verification of the reciprocity theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]