A two-way paraxial system for simulation of wave backscattering by a random medium

This paper presents a probabilistic analysis of an iterative two-way paraxial scheme for the simulation of wave propagation in random media. This scheme has the computational cost of the standard one-way paraxial wave equation but has the accuracy of the full wave equation in a regime beyond the classical paraxial regime. More precisely, it accurately predicts the statistics of the reflected wave field. The accuracy is determined by the order of the iterative scheme and the ratio of the random backscattering intensity over the random forward-scattering intensity.