HIGH-FREQUENCY APPROXIMATIONS FOR EDGE SCATTER FROM SURFACES OF REVOLUTION

We consider the radar backscatter from a truncated surface of revolution viewed at axial incidence and derive a closed-form high-frequency (HF) approximation for the physical-optics (PO) scattering integral. The PO predicted edge effect is extracted from this result and used to obtain a closed-form HF representation for the edge effect predicted by the geometrical theory of diffraction. The predictions for total radar backscatter thus obtained are compared with the results of some method-of-moment calculations (for paraboloids) and also with the older theoretical results of Raybin [IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. AP-13, 754 (1965)] for spherical segments.