Wave Interactions with Random Inhomogeneous Media

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Many natural and man-made media vary randomly in space and time, and therefore electromagnetic, optical, and acoustic waves propagating in these random media experience random fluctuations in space and time. Examples are microwave, optical, and acoustic wave scattering by ocean waves, atmospheric turbulence, solar wind, rain, fog, snow, terrain, vegetation, biological media, composite and disordered materials, and rough surfaces. These interactions between the wave and the random media affect a broad range of practical problems such as communications, identifications and remote sensing of these media, inverse scattering, and imaging of objects in the medium. For almost 20 years, we have been conducting extensive basic research on waves in random media, and we have been successful in making substantial contributions in this field. On the basis of our background and experience, we propose to conduct extensive theoretical investigations, numerical studies, and controlled laboratory experiments on multiple scattering. Our objectives are the understanding of the physical processes of these multiple scattering phenomena and the development of mathematical models useful for practical applications. Our proposed work will be centered on several specific topics including the backscattering enhancement from scatterers and rough surfaces, pulse scattering in particles and rough surfaces, lateral and range resolutions, depolarization and degree of polarization of scattered waves, higher order moments of the scattered wave, vector radiative transfer for dense spherical and nonspherical particles, imaging of objects in random media, and application of neural network technique to inverse scattering problems. We propose to conduct carefully controlled optical, millimeter wave, and acoustic experiments in order to guide the development of the theories. We also propose to conduct extensive numerical Monte Carlo simulations to help construct theoretical models. This combination of theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies has proved to be most effective in our research. These studies encompass fundamental research as well as practical applications and should lead to improved or new statistical wave theories which will be useful in applications such as atmospheric optics, ocean acoustics, geophysical remote-sensing, radars,lidars, ultrasound imaging, optical diffusion in tissues, inverse scattering of random media, and disordered and composite materials.