Reflection of plane waves by rough surfaces in the sense of Born approximation

The topic of the present paper is the reflection of electromagnetic plane waves by rough surfaces, that is, by smooth and bounded perturbations of planar faces. Moreover, the contrast between the cover material and the substrate beneath the rough surface is supposed to be low. In this case, a modification of Stearns’ formula based on Born approximation and Fourier techniques is derived for a special class of surfaces. This class contains the graphs of functions where the interface function is a radially modulated almost periodic function. For the Born formula to converge, a sufficient and almost necessary condition is given. A further technical condition is defined, which guarantees the existence of the corresponding far field of the Born approximation. This far field contains plane waves, far-field terms such as those for bounded scatterers, and, additionally, a new type of terms. The derived formulas can be used for the fast numerical computations of far fields and for the statistics of random rough surfaces. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.