REFLECTION PROPERTIES OF METEOR TRAILS IN A FORWARD-SCATTER RADAR EXPERIMENT

The distribution of the energy reflected by a meteor trail is strongly connected to the ionization density distribution across and along a m eteor trail. Recent forward-scatter observations over the Bologna-Lecc e baseline in Italy carried out in 1991-92, show that the number of un derdense meteor trails (with electron line density q less-than-or-equa l-to 2.10(14) electrons/m vs. peak signal amplitudes decreases more ra pidly with the increasing signal level than what predicted. An exponen tial (simple and/or log-normal) model is proposed, by taking into acco unt different signal-to-noise ratio thresholds and the Kolmogorov-Smir nov (K-S) procedure is used to test the overall goodness of fit betwee n the set of observations and specified theoretical distributions. It is shown that this model provides a better fit to data mainly for midd le-high levels of received power and for values of q greater-than-or-e qual-to 10(13) electrons/M.