The Role of the Effect of Shadowing of Some Wavy Regions by Other Wavy Regions in the Formation of an Image of Snell’s Window

Abstract

The shadowing of some regions of a wavy water surface by other regions can significantly influence the backscattered signal not only in the problem of remote monitoring of a water reservoir at grazing angles (e.g., in radar), but also in the problems of underwater vision. In this work, we present the results of a theoretical study of this phenomenon with respect to the model of underwater imaging of the sky (Snell’s window) near the image boundary. The numerical-simulation method is used to develop the statistically mean image of Snell’s window, which allows for the shadowing effects, and the corrected formula of the estimate of a wave parameter, namely, the water-surface slope variance, is obtained using the value of blurring of the boundary of Snell’s window.