Scattering from dielectric targets buried beneath 2-D randomly rough surfaces

This work presents the Mueller matrix elements for scattering from dielectric targets buried beneath 2-D random rough surfaces (3-D scattering problem). The fully polarimetric scattering matrix S is computed for hundreds of computer generated random rough surface realizations and hence the Mueller matrix elements are obtained. The numerical results show that if one relies only on the co- or cross-polarized intensities (i.e. the magnitude of the four elements of the polarimetric scattering matrix S); it is very difficult to sense the buried objects. However, investigating all the sixteen Mueller matrix elements greatly helps in detecting these objects.