Propagation of polarized millimeter waves through falling snow

Propagation of coherent linearly polarized waves through falling snow is calculated for two monodisperse and one polydisperse model snowstorms for fixed orientation and for random orientation of the snow crystals, at a 10-mm wavelength, utilizing a theoretical model based on the Foldy-Lax model. Results for linearly polarized waves incident on oriented monodispersions and polydispersions exhibit a marked damped oscillatory behavior as a function of propagation distance for the copolarized and cross-polarized intensities. For the polydispersion, a simple approximation for the dependence of the forward scattering matrix elements on snow crystal size is also obtained.