Reference-wave solutions for the high-frequency fields in random media

Abstract

Ray theory plays an important role in determining the propagation properties of high-frequency fields and their statistical measures in complicated random environments. For computations of the statistical measures it is desirable therefore to possess a solution for the high-frequency field propagating along an isolated ray trajectory. In this work a reference wave is applied to obtain an analytic solution of the parabolic wave equation describing propagation along the ray trajectory of the deterministic background medium. The methodology is based on defining a paired field measure as a product of an unknown field propagating in a disturbed medium and the complex conjugate component propagating in a medium without random fluctuations. Once a solution of the equation for the paired field measure is obtained, the solution of the unknown field can be determined in an explicit form by extracting from the paired solution the solution of the deterministic component.