An analysis of the scattering of discrete scatterers in an electrically dense medium

Abstract

A theoretical model based on the radiative transfer theory is developed to study the scattering mechanisms in an electrically dense medium where the average separation between the discrete spherical scatterers is comparable to the wavelength. For an electrically dense medium, two types of correction, the amplitude and the phase corrections, are required to be incorporated in the phase matrix. The amplitude correction is incorporated by including near field terms in the phase matrix expressions of the Mie scatterers, whereas the phase correction is implemented by multiplying a phase correction factor to the Stokes matrix of the scatterer. The phase correction factor is developed based on the antenna array concept. The comparison between the phase matrices with and without phase and amplitude corrections is carried out, with the illustrations of three dimensional model of these matrices. The results show that it is necessary to incorporate amplitude and phase corrections in an electrically dense medium. The phase matrix with amplitude and phase corrections is later used in the backscatter model and the effect of these corrections to the backscattering coefficient is also examined.