Rain, hail, snow and chaff are examples of volume clutter. An airborne target, at range R, is within a rainstorm. What is the effect on the detectability of the target?
Figure 1. Illustration of illuminated Rain Cell
First find the magnitude of the clutter return. Assume that the clutter fills the cell containing the target, that scatterers are statistically independent and that the scatterers are uniformly distributed through the volume. The clutter volume illuminated by a pulse can be calculated from the beam widths and the pulse duration