• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.556-561
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• 2008

The characteristics of microwave reflectometry, which is based on the technologies of FM radar and is applied as a non-invasive method to examine the properties including density distribution of inhomogeneous media, is investigated. The microwave reflectometry system requires not only an optimized system hardware but as well as the understanding of system response from the media under test in order to provide the system solution describing the object under test quantitatively. The introduction of microwave reflectometry especially in the area of applied plasma physics has been relatively new and the number of usage is found to be increasing gradually. The experimental method to characterize the microwave system as a device to examine the properties of plasma is explained. The microwave reflectometry signals consist of the cutoff signals which originate from the region where most of the reflected power comes from and the scattered signals which result as an interaction of the microwave and the density perturbations. This paper describes the experimental results of the scattered signal from the microwave reflectometry, such as the wavenumber dependence and the sensitivity on density perturbation, and the comparison of the characteristics with those from the numerical simulations and those from the cutoff signals.