A two-way paraxial system for simulation of wave backscattering by a random medium

This paper presents a probabilistic analysis of an iterative two-way paraxial scheme for the simulation of wave propagation in anisotropic random media. This scheme has the computational cost of the standard one-way paraxial wave equation but has the accuracy of the full wave equation in a regime beyond the classical paraxial regime. More precisely, it accurately predicts the statistics of the reflected wave field. The accuracy depends on two parameters: the order of the iterative scheme and the ratio of the random backscattering intensity over the random forward-scattering intensity.