Measured RF Backscatter Power Statistics in Indoor Sensing

Backscatter power measurements are collected to characterize indoor radar clutter in monostatic sensing applications. A narrowband 28 GHz sounder used a quasi-monostatic radar arrangement with an omnidirectional transmit antenna illuminating an indoor scene and a spinning horn receive antenna offset vertically (less than 1 m away) collecting backscattered power as a function of azimuth. Power variation in azimuth around the local average is found to be within 1 dB of a lognormal distribution with a standard deviation of 6.8 dB. Backscatter azimuth spectra are found to be highly variable with location, with cross-correlation coefficients on the order of 0.3 at separations as small as 0.1 m. These statistics are needed for system-level evaluation of RF sensing performance.