ABSTRACTThe article is devoted to solving the actual scientific task of restoration of precipitation microstructural characteristics by double-frequency remote sensing with a glance of rain particles nonsphericity. At that, the calculations of radar cross section of raindrops were performed by approximated methods on the basis of spherical drops of equivalent volume and dipole scattering. Results obtained are compared with the calculations of the rigorous method of moments. It was shown that errors of approximate calculations of backscattering characteristics are smaller for the same vertical polarization of frequency channels of double-frequency radar. In addition, the behaviour of the differential backscattering cross section is studied.