We consider a class of nonhomogeneous elliptic equations in the half-space with critical singular boundary potentials and nonlinear fractional derivative terms. The forcing terms are considered on the boundary and can be taken as singular measure. Employing a functional setting and approach based on localization-in-frequency and Littlewood–Paley decomposition, we obtain results on solvability, regularity, and symmetry of solutions.

In this paper, a $W^{-1,N'}$ estimate of the pressure is derived when its gradient is the divergence of a matrix-valued measure on $\mathbb R^N$, or on a regular bounded open set of $\mathbb R^N$. The proof is based partially on the Strauss inequality [Strauss, Partial Differential Equations: Proc. Symp. Pure Math. 23 (1973) 207–214] in dimension two, and on a recent result of Bourgain and Brezis [J. Eur. Math. Soc. 9 (2007) 277–315] in higher dimension. The estimate is used to derive a representation result for divergence free distributions which read as the divergence of a measure, and to prove an existence result for the stationary Navier-Stokes equation when the viscosity tensor is only in L1.