Experimental Measurement of EMWs Depolarization in S- and C-Bands Due to Sand Flux

The copolarization and cross-polarization powers of the vertically polarized electromagnetic waves (EMWs) are experimentally investigated after propagating through the sand flux, based on which the attenuation (A ) and the cross-polarization discriminations (XPDs) of EMWs due to sand flux are derived. Results indicate that the A is inversely proportional to the XPD for both S-band and C-band EMWs, which is accordant with our calculated results in trend; the smaller the sand particles are, the larger the attenuation of EMWs will be and the lower the XPD will become. Within the visibility of 0.14-0.16 m, the largest attenuation coefficient of C-band EMWs can reach to 2.3 dB/m; the effect of relative humidity (RH) on XPD for S-band EMWs due to sand flux is not obvious when the RH is lower, about within (10%-30%).