Determination of radar performance degradation due to tropospheric ducts

Wave propagation for anomalous meteorological conditions around Canton Island is studied by pursuing the geometrical optics and the physical optics approaches. The relative merits along with the limitations of these two approaches have been established. For ranges beyond line of sight the physical optics approach is applied to the bilinear and the tri-linear refractive index profiles. The numerical analysis to determine the real eigenvalues and the height gain functions has been carried out for the bilinear refractive index profile. This numerical analysis has been carried out for four bilinear refractive index profiles and three wavelengths.