Speckle size of light scattered from 3D rough objects

From scalar Helmholtz integral relation and by coordinate system transformation, this paper begins with a derivation of the far-zone speckle field in the observation plane perpendicular to the scattering direction from an arbitrarily shaped conducting rough object illuminated by a plane wave illumination, followed by the spatial correlation function of the speckle intensity to obtain the speckle size from the objects. Especially, the specific expressions for the speckle sizes of light backscattered from spheres, cylinders and cones are obtained in detail showing that the speckle size along one direction in the observation plane is proportional to the incident wavelength and the distance between the object and the observation plane, and is inverse proportional to the maximal illuminated dimension of the object parallel to the direction. In addition, the shapes of the speckle of the rough objects with different shapes are different. The investigation on the speckle size in this paper will be useful for the statistical properties of speckle from complicated rough objects and the speckle imaging to target detection and identification.