Abstract
In location and remote sensing experiments there arise a number of effects related to the double passage of the backscattered field through the same random inhomogeneities as the incident one. To account for the correlation of the forward–backward propagating events, there is a need for a measure in which the random information along the propagation path is preserved. For the generation of even statistical moments, the relevant measure defined in the recently formulated stochastic geometrical theory of diflraction is the two-point random function (TPRF)—a paired field measure which is propagated along the geometrical rays of the deterministic background medium. From this function all even statistical moments can be generated. Here we present an approximate analytical solution for the high-frequency propagator obtained by applying the multiscale expansion asymptotic procedure to the partial differential equation governing the propagation a1 the TPRF. The test of the solution is performed on canonical backscattering problems based on point source–point scatterer and paint source–plane mirror configurations, which justifies its further application for construction of the coherence measures of the rctrareflected field. Coherence properties of the plane and spherical wavefields reflected backward by a plane mirror were investigated. Further, we investigated the intensity enhancement effects observed in the double passage of a Gaussian beam retroreflected from a plane mirror. Asymptotic expressions lor the retroreflected intensity are obtained, and their computations show good agreement with the direct numerical evaluations.