Shira L. Broschat
School of Elec. Eng. and Comput. Sci., Washington State Univ., Pullman, WA 99164-2752
Eric I. Thorsos
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105
The small slope approximation (SSA), introduced by Voronovich in the
mid-1980s [A. G. Voronovich, Sov. Phys. JETP 62, 65--70 (1985)], has been shown
to be a very promising method for modeling wave scattering from rough surfaces.
The theory gives a systematic series which is manifestly reciprocal at each
order, reduction to perturbation theory is intrinsic to the formulation, and
reduction to the Kirchoff approximation occurs under the appropriate conditions
when the first two terms of the series are retained [E. I. Thorsos and S. L.