Scattering of waves from dense discrete random media: theory and applications in remote sensing

In a dense medium, the particles do not scatter independently. The effects of correlated scattering become important, and the spatial correlations of particles have to be included [1-5]. These have been verified in controlled laboratory experiments [3,4]. Propagation and scattering in dense media have been studied with the quasicrystalline approximation [2], and the quasicrystalline approximation with coherent potential for the first moment of the field [1] and the correlated ladder approximation for the second moment of the field [6]. The dense medium radiative transfer theory has also been developed from these approximations to study multiple scattering effects in dense media [6-8]. We have recently extended the results to medium to high frequencies and included the effects of Mie scattering from correlated scatterers of multiple sizes [9]. As a function of frequency, scattering first increases rapidly in the Rayleigh regime, then starts to level off at the Mie scattering regime. Comparisons have been made with experimental data of snow.