Measuring the extinction cross section

This paper describes a method to determine the extinction cross section for a very large bandwidth in the microwave region. The method is based on measurements of the radar cross section in the forward direction to calculate the extinction cross section. The method is applicable to samples of arbitrary shape and composition. Coherent background subtraction and time domain gating is used for the frequency range [2.5, 38] GHz to increase the sensitivity. The efficiency of the background subtraction and the accuracy of the measurements are estimated.