Analysis of troposphere scatter propagation loss for over-the-horizon passive detection

The troposphere scatter mechanism is potential for the passive detection of various over-the-horizon (OTH) targets such as radar, in which the prediction of propagation loss plays an important role. According to the latest recommendation of Radiocommunication Sector of International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R), this paper establishes a model to effectively predict the propagation loss for passive detection, which describes the dependence of propagation loss with respect to several important factors including the receiving/transmitting beam angles, the target distance and the height of receiving antenna. Furthermore, the detectable region of the passive receiver is also derived for the OTH targets. Simulation result shows the effectiveness of the model and the theoretical analysis.