4006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 50, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2012
Electromagnetic Radiation Fields in Three-Layered
Media With Rough Interfaces
Samira Tadros Bishay, Osama M. Abo-Seida, and Hanan Shehata Shoeib
Abstract—Research related to the radiation and propagation
of the electromagnetic fields in half space or stratified media is
of interest and is considered by many authors. In this paper, a
theoretical study is discussed about the propagation of radio waves
in the sea (three-layered media). The variations which occur in the
shape of the sea surface and sea bottom are considered. The effects
of the roughness exercised onto the electromagnetic field of ar-
rangements radiating a pure transverse electric field in the sea are
studied by using the perturbation method. Closed-form expression
for the far field generated by a vertical magnetic dipole embedded
below the sea surface is calculated by using a simple technique to
evaluate Sommerfeld integrals with the aid of the complex image
theory, which was quite difficult to evaluate previously. The results
obtained are compared with those mentioned elsewhere.
Index Terms—Far field, radiation in the sea, rough surfaces,
stratified media, vertical magnetic dipole.
I. I NTRODUCTION
C
OMMUNICATION of radio waves in the sea is required
for human activities that take place, particularly in recent
years. It is worthwhile researching the far-region electromag-
netic radiation due to a vertical magnetic dipole in the sea
because it is often used for the underwater communication.
Wait [1], Moore and Blair [2], and Durrani [3], considered the
problem, but in their works, the sea was assumed to be a two-
layered conducting medium (air and seawater). If the sea is
proportionally deep to dissipate radio waves, it is reasonable to
assume that it is also semi-infinite downward and the sea bottom
need not be included. However, the effect of the sea bottom
is important in some situations such as a shallow sea, a low
frequency, and the transmitting and receiving points are close to
the bottom. Thus, Arutaki and Chiba [4] considered the sea as
a three-layered conducting medium (air, seawater, and ground)
for communication near the sea bottom. They investigated the
sequences of considering the sea to be of a finite depth. The
effect of the sea bottom was found to play an essential role in
the cases mentioned above. In their treatment, however, the sea
Manuscript received April 18, 2011; revised October 24, 2011 and
January 16, 2012; accepted January 22, 2012. Date of publication April 3, 2012;
date of current version September 21, 2012.
S. T. Bishay is with the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Ain
Shams University, Cairo 11566, Egypt (e-mail: stbishay@yahoo.com).
O. M. Abo-Seida is with the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Sci-
ence, Kafr El-Sheikh University, Kafr El-Sheik 33516, Egypt. Currently with
the Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, King Faisal University,
Al-Ahsaa 31982, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: aboseida@yahoo.com).
H. S. Shoeib is with the Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University, Cairo
11566, Egypt (e-mail: hanan.shehata@yahoo.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TGRS.2012.2188409
surface was taken to be planar. Afterward, Bishay presented
different studies, regarding the effect of the sea waves that
occur, on the sea surface only (see [5] and [6]) while others on
both the sea surface and the sea bottom (see [7] and [8]). The
deviation of the two rough sea surface and sea bottom from flat
ones is small and has small slopes. Osama et al. [9] analyzed the
effect of sea waves that occur on the sea surface and obtained
the formal solution of the far field in the seawater. Recently,
Franceschetti et al. [10] investigated analytically the scattering
from layered structures with one rough interface. Furthermore,
Imperatore et al. [11] studied scattering from layered structures
with an arbitrary number of rough interfaces.
In this paper, as an alternative, with the aid of the perturbation
method which Becker [12] and Bishay and Mohammed [13]
used, we study the effect of the variations which occur in both
the sea surface and bottom due to the sea waves. Moreover,
we look into the solution for the case of uniform sea height
(flat one), which Arutaki and Chiba [4] and Long et al. [14]
derived. The studies [4]–[8] got the formula of the far field
in the seawater by resolving the Sommerfeld integrals through
the residue and saddle-point methods. These methods involved
lengthy algebra and several transformations which were rather
complicated and difficult to evaluate. Studies [4]–[7], also did
not calculate or include the disturbed field in the sea or their
numerical results. Therefore, in this work, we use a simple
technique [14] to evaluate Sommerfeld integrals in a few easily
remembered steps with the aid of the complex image theory
[15], to obtain a closed-form expression for the far field in the
region of the seawater due to a vertical magnetic dipole in a
sea. We also offer some numerical calculations which show the
importance of the bottom existence and discuss the physical
meaning.
II. STRUCTURE OF THE SPACE UNDER I NVESTIGATION
We adopt the following model as shown in Fig. 1. A small
electric current loop antenna, whose magnetic moment is IS
0
,
is located in the middle layer (i.e., in the sea) at depth d
1
,
horizontally. An observing point p(r, z) is located at depth d
2
.
We suppose that the thickness of the sea is a, and that air is
infinite upward and the ground downward along the z-axis. All
regions are infinite sideward and are homogeneous. R is the
distance between the source and the observation point P .
The material constants are assumed to be as follows. The
dielectric constant in the air, sea, and ground are ε
0
, ε
2
, and
ε
3
, respectively. The magnetic permeability is taken equal to
that of the free space in every layer. The conductivity of the
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