The Dependence of the Statistics of the Detected Intensity on the Scatterer Properties in Microwave Imaging

A model is proposed for surface scattering of electromagnetic waves which combines the effects of scatterer bunching and Poisson number fluctuations due to a restricted number of scatterers lying within the illuminated region. The fluctuating scatterer density is assumed to take the form of Gaussian noise analogous to thermal radiation, whose properties are well known. The model compares favourably with the successful K-distribution models. It also indicates one approach by which the effects of surface correlations in the scatterer density can be investigated.