Scattering of VHF and UHF radar signals from the turbulent air

In the derivation of Booker‐Gordon scattering cross sections in a turbulent atmosphere, certain assumptions have been made so that the power scattered within the scattering volume will add coherently. This results in a scattered power that is proportional to the effective scattering volume. As the scattering volume increases without bound, it leads to a physically unreasonable result of infinite scattered power. In this paper we examine these assumptions. In particular, we study the scattering cross sections, taking into account the possible phase incoherence of the scattered fields within the scattering volume. In addition, the effect of a thin turbulent layer on the complex autocorrelation function is investigated. The turbulence is assumed to be locally frozen. Expressions for both the Doppler shift and the correlation time have been derived.