Increase of antenna area instead of transmitter power, part 6.3A

An extension of the antenna area may be preferred to an increase of transmitter power, when it is considered that reflection often dominates the scatter contribution at near zenith angles. It is noticed that an increase of the antenna area A, linearly increases the contribution of reflection. This most likely occur at vertical incidence, since the mean generalized refractive index gradient (M) is largest in the vertical direction. The altitude ranges at which the echo power gets weak and we have to consider improvements of sensitivity are mostly larger than 5 to 8 km. It follows that the considerations are valid up to antenna diameters close to 200 m for wavelengths of 6 m. On the other hand the reflected component has to be larger than the scattered component which only holds for near zenith angles.