The Noise Level of Total Scattering Cross Section Measurement in a Reverberation Chamber

A chamber can be used to measure the total scattering cross section (TSCS) of an object, in which the time-domain response needs to be analyzed to extract the scattering damping time. It has been observed in measurements that the noise level in extracting the scattering damping time is much higher than that in extracting the chamber decay time. The reasons behind this phenomenon are explored in this letter. Analytical distributions of the noise in TSCS measurements are derived and validated by measurements. Good agreements between analytical results and measurement results have been obtained, which gives guidelines on the prediction of noise level and the required independent sample number in the total scattering cross section measurement.