Microwave tree scattering experiment: comparison of theory and experiment

An experiment to study the microwave scattering from a 5 meter fir tree has been performed in a large anechoic chamber and the results have been compared with a coherent microwave scattering model of the tree. The chamber, which is part of the European Microwave Signature Laboratory (EMSL) at the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, has been operated in the backscatter and the bistatic modes to measure the scattering properties of the tree in the 1-10 GHz range. In addition, a network analyzer has been used to measure the dielectric constant of the tree parts. The location and size of representative portions of the tree architecture have been recorded and a vectorization technique has then been employed to reconstruct the complete tree architecture from this sampled data. Results in the 2 GHz region have shown that the data and theory follow one another quite closely, however the theoretical calculations for like-pol are a few dbs below the corresponding experimental values