Naval Research Laboratory 1

Washington, DC 20375-5000

6867
NRL Memorandum Report
AD-A239 578

Exact Result for the Grazing Angle of Specular

Reflection from a Sphere
ALLEN R. MILLER AND EMANUEL VEGH*

Battle Management Technology

Information Technology Division

*IdentificationsSystems Branch
Radar Division

August 9, 1991

~AUG199911

91-07997
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1 1991 August 9 Memorandum Jan 91-May 91
4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE S. FUNDING NUMBERS
EXACT RESULT FOR THE GRAZING ANGLE OF SPECULAR 62-11IN
REFLECTION FROM A SPHERE N0OO01991W
6. AUTHOR(S)

Allen R. Miller and Emanuel Vegh*

7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) B. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION
REPORT NUMBER
Naval Research Laboratory NLMmrnu
4555 Overlook Avenue NLMmrnu
Washington, DC 20375-5000 Report6867

9. SPONSORING/ MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADORESS(ES) 10. SPONSORING/" IONITORING

AGENCY REPORT NUMBER
Naval Air Systems Command
Washington, DC 20361

11. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

*'Identifications Systems Branch, Radar Division

12a. DISTRIBUTION/ AVAILABILITY STATEMENT r12b. DISTRIBUTION CODE

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

13. ABSTRACT (Maximum 200 words)

An exact formula is given for the grazing angle of specular reflection from a
sphere by displaying the zeros of a certain self-inversive quartic polynomial.

14. SUBJECT TERMS 15. NUMBER OF PAGES

grazing angle spherical earth quartic polynomial 17
specular reflection self-inversive polynomial exact solutions 16. PRICE CODE
17. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION 1 18 SECURITY CLASSIFICATION 19. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION 20. LIMITATIONOFATRC
OF REPORT OF THIS PAGE OF ABSTRACT
UNCLASSIFIED I UNCLASSIFIED UNCLASSIFIEDSA
NSN 7540.01 .?Rn-,500 sta"darc For- 298 (Rev 289)
p,' AN%- 10' *Iq 15
 CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1

2. PRELIMINARIES ........................................................................................... 4

3. THE ROOTS OF THE QUARTIC ....................................................................... 7

4. THE GRAZING ANGLE .................................................................................. 8

5. SPECIAL CASES ............................................................................................ 9

6. CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................... 12

7. REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 13

Accession For

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 EXACT RESULT FOR THE GRAZING ANGLE OF SPECULAR
REFLECTION FROM A SPHERE

1. Introduction
When the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection of a wave or signal are equal, we
say that we have specular reflection. The angle of specular reflection or grazing angle from
a perfectly flat surface is easy to compute, but this same angle from a perfect sphere is com-
puted with some difficulty and no exact formula for it is presently known. The problem for
the sphere goes back almost half a century to W.T. Fishback [1] who gave an approximation
for the grazing angle.
Let r be the radius of a sphere, hi and h2 respectively the perpendicular heights of an
observer and source above the sphere and 0 the angle (measured from the center of the
sphere) between the observer and source. If we trace a wave from source to observer (or
vice versa), let ik be the specular angle of reflection from the sphere (see Figure 1). Miller
and Vegh [2] gave an easy iterative method for computing the grazing angle to any degree of
accuracy. They also showed that in principle a formula for the grazing angle can be found
by computing the roots of the self-inversive quartic polynomial equation:

az 4 + 13z 3 + _fz 2 +/Oz + i= (1)

where
a = e"(e' - k1k2 )

i3k?I+2k, k 2 e'o
t-y 2(k? +/ - jkl2 COS -1

and
= /(r + h.), i = 1,2

0< cos 1 (k) + co_ 1 (k2 ) < 1.

If the latter inequality does not hold, reflection cannot occur and no grazing angle exists.
Further, if z. designates any of the roots of equation (1) and
1
= -cos-(Re z.)
Manuscript approved June 18. 1991.
they showed that the unique value 0 of 0. that satisfies

+20 = co0)+co-(k2 cos ib)

-coC'(ki (2)

is the grazing angle.

Recently, Secrest proved the conjecture of Miller [3] that the roots of equation (1) have
absolute value one. Moreover, Secrest showed that for

0 < kl,k 2 < 1, k, 3 k2 , 0 < q5 < r (3)

four distinct roots of equation (1) exist. It was noted there also that the roots themselves
are unknown in general.
In this paper, we shall use the fact that equation (1) has distinct roots of absolute value
one when the inequalities (3) hold to factor the quartic polynomial, thus giving an explicit
formula for the grazing angle. When k = k, = k2 the grazing angle is given by

= tan-' (cot q/2 - k cosec 46/2)

 SOURCE

//r

Fiureoety
1 fsperca peulr eletin

3
2. Preliminaries
In equation (1) we make the transformation

Z = (,&/a)I/43 -(1/2)i SalOS (4)

thereby rotating the roots thru an angle of (-1/2) arga. Thus we arrive at

.4 as4 + bS2 + +1=0

= (5)

where
a =j(aa-/

b= y/Ia)-.
Since equation (1) has distinct roots of absolute value one, then so does equation (5) which
we factor into two quadratics:

-
(3 2 + ul.9 + eU)(a 2 + U24
2 + e 2) =0 (6)

where U 1 ,U 2 ,0 are to be determined. Writing equation (6)

(e-s 2 + u e- a + e$)(e 32 + U2 e s + e-) = 0

since each quadratic factor has zeros on the unit circle, we must have

i , (7)
u lei= U2= J-i

where pl, 112 are real and iI1 !5 2, ItI21 < 2. Now comparing the coefficients of like powers

of a in equations (5) and (6) and using equations (7) we obtain

-
a = pieis + / 2 e" (8)

b= e2 + e- 2if + IA2 (9)

Solving equation (8) for ul and p2 we deduce

1 (Re a Ima (10)

cos + sinO)

4
 1 (Rea
Im a)
JA2 O- sine)
and defining
t =cos 2 o, 0 <0 < 7r/2
we find from equation (9) that B is determined by the zeros of the cubic monic polynomial

Re2 a
b + 6 t 2 +8 + 4b + a
4 16 16
Assuming that Re a and Im a are different from zero we readily see that

Re2 a <0
16
Im 2 a
16
so that f(t) has at least one zero in the interval 0 < t < 1. In fact, f(t) has three distinct
zeros in the interval 0 < t < 1. To see this, let 91,s2,s3, 84 be the distinct roots of equation
(5) which we may write

[( S - 1)(4s - -2)][(S - 33)(8 - 84)] = 0

[(a - 31)(3 - 83)][(, - 32)(3 - 4)] = 0

[(S - 81)(S - 34)][(- - -2)(8 - 93)] = 0

Hence we may factor equation (5) into two quadratics in three different ways, so that in
equation (6) we would expect three distinct triples (ul, U2, 8). Further, since the cubic
equation f(t) = 0 has three distinct real roots, its discriminant is positive and we can easily
write formulas for these three roots (see for example [4, p. 125]). Thus if we let T be any
zero of f (t) we have from equations (10) and (11)

"' I - a+ Ima (12)

1 (Rea Im a
(13)
5/
where 0 < T < 1. In particular, setting

b+ _84b+ jaJ2 ,e2 a

4 16 16
P 1I- 4/3, q (2c4- 9cjc2 +27co)/27

the zeros of f (t) are

2 2 -p ( 47r
~-Cos W 2 P Cos (Wi7r), 2 :cs_
3 3 3 -P
R 3
and we may choose T to be any one of the latter expressions.

6
3. The Roots of the Quartic
Noting equation (7) we write the four roots of equation (6):

31= 2 (_ 'uCos 0 - /41 ' sin 0) + 2 (-p, sin 0+ %4-4 ;cos80)

82= 2 (-/1,Cos
-- 0+ V4 -- ;j2 sin 0) + 2 (_pj sin0 - 4 Cos 0)
os

53 = 2 (-_1 2 CoS0+ V4- , sin0) + 2 (1 2 sin0+ V4- cos6)

= 2 (-1
14 2 CoS- V sin
sine)+ ( Cos6);

and now applying the rotation equation (4) we obtain the four distinct roots of equation (1):

zk = exp (arg Sk 1 arg a) , (k = 1,2,3,4) (14)

where
arg=tan-,(
arga= ta-1 cos 2q5- - kk2:
sin 20 k k2 COS
sin 0 (15))

and

arg ,=tan- (1 -T+ V4- V (16.1)

arg 2 = tan(~ - 44- vr) (16.2)

arg 3 =tan(IA2 T+ VI )/ (16.3)

arg S4 =tan-1(I2 V1 - T - iV )4- (16.4)

In equations (16) pi and 12 are given respectively by equations (12) and (13) and T
(0 < T < 1) is any zero of the cubic polynomial f(t). We remark that the signs of the
numerator and denominator of the argument of the inverse tangent function in equations
(15) and (16) must not be disturbed by, for example, simplification of these equations.

7
4. The Grazing Angle
From equation (14) we now find the four angles:
1 1
01 = (arg a, - Iarg a)
1 1
lb2 = 1 (arg 82 - 1 arg a)
2 2
1 1
lb3 = - arg .9 - - arg a)
2 2
04= 1 (arg 84 - 1arg a)
and the unique value of 4ik that satisfies equation (2) is the grazing angle 7P. We observe
that since lb must be in the interval (0, 7r/2), we can reject immediately any of the 7ki not in
this interval.
It is interesting to note that if we choose the zero of f(t) to be

T F:32
-cos (w+ r)

extensive numerical computations indicate that the grazing angle is given by

lb f (ag 52 -
(argsa,- I arg a ),
arg <2
a), 00O< < r
<7r/2

Although the authors cannot prove this conjecture analytically, it is certainly true; and
applied workers should not hesitate to use it, since it is a simple matter to check numerically
by substitution whether l is in fact the unique root of equation (2).

8 IIII
5. Special Cases
Since
Re = co(arg 8 - arg )
a9 1
Im a = sin(arg 0 - 1 arg a)

we have2 p2 2
Re a Ima= sin(2 ag/3 - arg a)

so that Re a or Im a vanish provided that

2 arg3 = arg a + n7r, (n = 0, 1, 2,...)

Taking the tangent of both sides of this equation gives

Im -2
a Re3 Iam,3
Pea Re 2 g - Im 21g

which yields after a little computation the result that Re a or Im a vanish provided that
kj, k 2 , 4' satisfy the equation:

cos0 = k1 k2 k) + ] (17)

For 0 < kI, k 2 < 1, k, - k 2 the right side of equation (17) is bounded by one so that 4' always
exists in the interval (0, 7r/2).
Numerical computations show that when equation (17) holds, then Re a = 0 and

Im a < 0; it appears then that Im a never vanishes. Nevertheless, for completeness, we shall
discuss below the two special cases Re a = 0 and Im a = 0, since we have not proved the

latter assertion but only indicated that its truth is supported by numerical evidence.
In the case when a is real, then it is easy to show from equations (6)-(9) that the roots
of equation (5) are given by
-2C-, + i V4 - ,)

9
where
I
Al =-(a+ /a2 -4b+8) (18.1)
12
A2 1(a - v'a2-4b+8); (18.2)
2
and in the case a (= ic, c real) is purely imaginary the roots of equation (5) are
1 (-Ali+V
2
1

(-.2)
2(Ai+ 14- A2)

(-A~i - Vr-4

where now
,1- (c +c 2 +4b+8) (19.1)
2

A2-(C- 2 /2 +4b+8). (19.2)

Therefore, if 0 < kl, k2 < 1, k, $ k2, 0 < 4 < ir are such that equation (17) holds,
then
in the case a is real we have

01-[tan'( ar g j]

2 - !arg a

1k=-[tan- () - 2arg a]

10
where arga and Al,L2 are given respectively by equations (15) and (18); and in the case
where a = ic (c real) we have

7k= [tan-' ( a)

0,2= [tan- -- ) - arga]

0k3 [tm
~t4 =[tan(-
12

12
) arg]

where IA and / 2 are given by equations (19).

I1
6. Conclusions
In the present paper we have shown that it is possible to exhibit the grazing angle of
specular reflection as one of four angles derived from the zeros of a certain self-inversive
quartic polynomial whose coefficients are complex. Thus the grazing angle may now be
found deterministically, whereas heretofore it had to be computed either by approximations

or numerical procedures.
The preceeding analysis shows further that factoring, in a useful way, a quartic polynomial
whose complex coefficients depend on even a small number of parameters, is not always a

trivial matter, even though the methods of Cardan and Ferrari have been known for centuries.

12
 References

1. W.T. Fishback, Simplified methods of field intensity calculations in the interface region,
MIT Radiation Laboratory Report 461, 1943.

2. A.R. Miller and E. Vegh, Computing the grazing angle of specular reflection, Int. J.
Math. Educ. Sci. Technol. 21, 271-274, 1990.

3. D. Secrest, Problem 6602: Roots on the unit circle, Amer. Math. Monthly 98, 176-177,
1991.

4. S. Borofsky, "Elementary Theory of Equations", Macmillan, 1950.

13