Monostatic and Bistatic Scattering Modeling of the Anisotropic Rough Soil

The electromagnetic scattering generated by agricultural tilled soils can be affected by a strong anisotropic component of the rough-surface profile. An accurate and reliable modeling of the normalized radar cross section, under both monostatic and bistatic geometries, is particularly important and desirable, especially for the correct estimation of the soil moisture content by means of satellite-based observations. In this paper, moving from the modeling so far proposed in the literature, we present and discuss a novel, more general (i.e., 2-D), spectral representation of an agricultural tilled soil, implementing a solution of the scattering based on the first-order small-slope approximation. Comparisons are given with a well-established model based on a 1-D representation of the soil correlation function, accounting for the radiation pattern of the illuminating antenna. The investigation gives new insight on the phenomenology of the bistatic scattering from the anisotropic soil, providing interesting information for the next generation of satellite missions, which foresees the possibility of launching companion satellites carrying aboard a passive receiver collecting the signal transmitted by active SAR-based platforms.

[1]  P. P. Shirshov,et al.  Small-slope approximation in wave scattering by rough surfaces , 2008 .

[2]  D. Vidal-Madjar,et al.  Radar backscattering over agricultural bare soils , 1996 .

[3]  A. Fung,et al.  Coherent scattering of a spherical wave from an irregular surface. [antenna pattern effects] , 1983 .

[4]  Nazzareno Pierdicca,et al.  Bistatic Radar Systems at Large Baselines for Ocean Observation , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[5]  SAR imagery to estimate roughness parameters when modelling runoff risk , 1999 .

[6]  Thuy Le Toan,et al.  A comparison between soil roughness statistics used in surface scattering models derived from mechanical and laser profilers , 2003, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[7]  Jin Au Kong,et al.  Wave scattering from a periodic dielectric surface for a general angle of incidence , 1982 .

[8]  Joel T. Johnson,et al.  Third-order small-perturbation method for scattering from dielectric rough surfaces , 1999 .

[9]  Joel T. Johnson,et al.  A study of the higher-order small-slope approximation for scattering from a Gaussian rough surface , 2003 .

[10]  H. A. Yueh,et al.  Scattering Of Electromagnetic Waves From A Periodic Surface With Random Roughness , 1988, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[11]  Francois Le Chevalier,et al.  An analytical model for the description of the full‐polarimetric sea surface Doppler signature , 2015 .

[12]  T. Tamir,et al.  Scattering of electromagnetic waves by a sinusoidally stratified half-space. I. Formal solution and analytic approximations , 1966 .

[13]  Urs Wegmüller,et al.  "Flashing Fields" in nearly simultaneous ENVISAT and ERS-2 C-band SAR images , 2006, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[14]  Francois Le Chevalier,et al.  Future Ocean Scatterometry: On the Use of Cross-Polar Scattering to Observe Very High Winds , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[15]  Y. Kerr,et al.  The SMOS Mission: New Tool for Monitoring Key Elements of the Global Water Cycle This satellite mission will use new algorithms to try to forecast weather and estimate climate change from satellite measurements of the Earth's surface. , 2010 .

[16]  K. Katsaros,et al.  A Unified Directional Spectrum for Long and Short Wind-Driven Waves , 1997 .

[17]  J. Kong,et al.  Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves: Theories and Applications , 2000 .

[18]  Fawwaz T. Ulaby,et al.  Bistatic specular scattering from rough dielectric surfaces , 1994 .

[19]  Richard K. Moore,et al.  Radar remote sensing and surface scattering and emission theory , 1986 .

[20]  Philip Marzahn,et al.  Decomposing Dual Scale Soil Surface Roughness for Microwave Remote Sensing Applications , 2012, Remote. Sens..

[21]  Marco Brogioni,et al.  Radar Bistatic Configurations for Soil Moisture Retrieval: A Simulation Study , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[22]  Jin Au Kong,et al.  Scattering of waves from periodic surfaces , 1981 .

[23]  Ingve Simonsen,et al.  Light scattering from anisotropic, randomly rough, perfectly conducting surfaces , 2011, Comput. Phys. Commun..

[24]  Adib Y. Nashashibi,et al.  MMW Polarimetric Radar Bistatic Scattering From a Random Surface , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[25]  Seung-Bum Kim,et al.  Models of L-Band Radar Backscattering Coefficients Over Global Terrain for Soil Moisture Retrieval , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[26]  Xavier Blaes,et al.  Characterizing Bidimensional Roughness of Agricultural Soil Surfaces for SAR Modeling , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[27]  Francesco Mattia,et al.  Coherent and incoherent scattering from tilled soil surfaces , 2011 .

[28]  A. Voronovich.  Small-slope approximation for electromagnetic wave scattering at a rough interface of two dielectric , 1994 .

[29]  Jiancheng Shi,et al.  The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission , 2010, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[30]  Marco Brogioni,et al.  SAVERS: A Simulator of GNSS Reflections From Bare and Vegetated Soils , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[31]  A. Fung.  Microwave Scattering and Emission Models and their Applications , 1994 .

[32]  Malcolm Davidson,et al.  On the characterization of agricultural soil roughness for radar remote sensing studies , 2000, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[33]  Adrian K. Fung,et al.  A Backscatter Model for a Randomly Perturbed Periodic Surface , 1982, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[34]  D. Vidal-Madjar,et al.  Backscattering behavior and simulation comparison over bare soils using SIR-C/X-SAR and ERASME 1994 data over Orgeval , 1997 .

[35]  R. T. Shin,et al.  Scattering of electromagnetic waves from a randomly perturbed quasiperiodic surface , 1984 .

[36]  Seung-Bum Kim,et al.  Soil Moisture Retrieval Using L-Band Radar Observations , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[37]  Valery U. Zavorotny,et al.  Full-Polarization Modeling of Monostatic and Bistatic Radar Scattering From a Rough Sea Surface , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

[38]  Jeffrey Ouellette,et al.  Polarization Features in Bistatic Scattering From Rough Surfaces , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[39]  Urs Wegmüller,et al.  Progress in the understanding of narrow directional microwave scattering of agricultural fields , 2011 .

[40]  A. Voronovich,et al.  Theoretical model for scattering of radar signals in K u - and C-bands from a rough sea surface with breaking waves , 2001 .