Remote sensing of a flat surface by an electromagnetic pulsed beam

The pulse method of measurement has significant advantages compared to time harmonic methods. Owing to its broad spectrum the scattered pulse gives exhaustive information about properties of a scattering object. Being restricted in space and time, a launched pulse can be localized on a small part of the object thus enabling one to investigate not only the time and frequency response of the object but also its interior structure. The problems of propagation and scattering of a pulsed wave beam can be solved in several ways. We here apply a spectral method to investigate the propagation and scattering of pulsed beams having arbitrary time and spatial form. This method gives one an opportunity to handle scatterers for which the Green´s function is unavailable in closed form.