Comparison of three different methods for terrain modeling in parabolic equation

In this paper, the parabolic equation model applied to irregular terrain is solved by using the split-step Fourier transform algorithm under the perfectly conducting condition. The forecast of propagation over irregular terrain is presented by using the terrain-masking model, the boundary-shift method, the shift map, and the piecewise linear shift map respectively, where the shift map is adopted as a standard for validation. The average error and standard deviation between the shift map solution and the other three methods are analyzed, which provides a theoretical support for the selection of terrain models in the actual situation.