Local spectral analysis of short-pulse excited scattering from weakly inhomogeneous media - Part I: Forward scattering

In this two-part sequence, we extend a previously formulated pulsed plane w ave (PPW)-based time-domain (TD) diffraction tomography [1] for forward and inverse scattering from weakly inhomogeneous lossless nondispersive media to a more highly localized pulsed beam (PB) wavepacket-based diffraction to mography, In the PPW version, the incident and scattered fields have been p arameterized in the space-time wavenumber domain in terms of slant-stacked TD plane waves whose wavefronts move through the scattering medium at the a mbient propagation speed, thereby accumulating information along time-resol ved laterally extended planar cuts, The PB parameterized localization confi nes the laterally sampled regions to the spatial domains of influence trans verse to the relevant beam axes. These localizations are performed in two s tages. The present paper implements the PB parameterization by PB post proc essing of the forward scattered fields excited by an incident PPW; the comp anion paper [2] deals with the inverse problem by back propagation of the P B parameterized data. An "ultimate" localization of a space-time resolved s cattering cell, achieved via scattered and incident PB's (PB post and prepr ocessing) will be addressed elsewhere, but is briefly summarized in [2].