GTD Terrain Reflection Model Applied to ILS Glide Scope

• Published in: IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems 1982-01, Vol.AES-18 (1), p.11-20
• Main Authors: Luebbers, R., Ungvichian, V., Mitchell, L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Electromagnetic reflection; Electromagnetic wave polarization; Instruments; Optical diffraction; Optical polarization; Optical reflection; Physical optics; Piecewise linear approximation; Shadow mapping; Solid modeling
• ISSN: 0018-9251; 1557-9603
• DOI: 10.1109/TAES.1982.309201

The capability of calculating the reflection of electromagnetic signals from uneven terrain has many applications. One of these is the determination of instrument landing system (ILS) glide slope performance. For this application the wavelength is approximately 1 m, incidence angles are usually near grazing, and the fields are horizontally polarized, so that gross irregularities such as dropoffs and hills are more important than surface roughness. Past approaches used to calculate the ground reflections for this application have been three-dimensional physical optics models which were very cumbersome and time consuming and which neglected important diffraction and shadowing phenomenon; a two-dimensional physical optics model which was faster than the three-dimensional models but ignored many shadowing and transverse terrain variation effects; and a half-plane diffraction model which is applicable only to a specified type of terrain geometry. In this paper a terrain reflection model based on the geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD) is described which can accommodate any piecewise linear terrain profile, requires less computer time than the physical optics models, is capable of including transverse terrain effects, and determines the reflected fields with all important diffraction and blockage effects included.