In this paper we derive two inequalities concerning two two-dimensional sca
ttering problems: in the first one the infinite cylinder is an obstacle and
the electric field satisfies an impedance boundary condition while in the
second one the scatterer is inhomogeneous. When the impedance and the refra
ctive index are two known constants these two inequalities can be used to o
btain lower bounds on the size of the scatterer. By means of some numerical
applications for the impedance problem, we show that the corresponding low
er bound is reliable both in the case of full-aperture data and in the case
of scattering from a limited aperture.