Enhanced Backscatter in a Reverberation Chamber: Inside Every Complex Problem is a Simple Solution Struggling to Get Out

We encountered problems when we attempted to model the behavior of a transmitting antenna in a reverberation chamber. Our model predicted the general statistical distribution of the complex reflection coefficient . S₁₁ of a test port connected to a transmitting antenna, but one measure of the variation was off by a factor of two. We eventually traced the increased variability to enhanced backscatter, in which reflections back in the direction of the source antenna tend to be larger than reflections in any other direction. Enhanced backscatter is a phenomenon generally associated with remote sensing, especially related to random media. We give a general explanations of this effect based on a simple ray-optics model.