Circularly polarized bistatic scattering from sastrugi surfaces

It has been shown that the global positioning system (GPS) signal scattering for the like-wise polarization (right-hand to right-hand circular polarization (RR)) yielded 20-30 dB lower level than that for the counter-wise one (left-hand to right-hand circular polarization (LR)), thus the counter-wise polarization was preferred in application to remote sensing by GPS signal scattering. In this paper we investigate the bistatic scattering from both double-layered and single sastrugi surfaces at C-band (5 GHz) at different azimuthal angles. Comparisons of bistatic scattering are made between like-wise type (LL, RR) and counter-wise type (RL, LR). Numerical simulations show that the conclusions of these past theoretical and numerical tests are not always valid for randomly sastrugi surfaces. The like-wise polarized scattering is comparable to the counter-wise one, and is even larger than counter-wise at some azimuthal angles.