Sensitivity Analysis of Bistatic Scattering for Soil Moisture Retrieval

Soil moisture is one of the vital environmental variables in the land–atmosphere cycle. A study of the sensitivity analysis of bistatic scattering coefficients from bare soil at the Ku-band is presented, with the aim of deepening our understanding of the bistatic scattering features and exploring its potential in soil moisture retrieval. First, a well-established advanced integral method was adopted for simulating the bistatic scattering response of bare soil. Secondly, a sensitivity index and a normalized weight quality index were proposed to evaluate the effect of soil moisture on the bistatic scattering coefficient in terms of polarization and angular diversity, and the combinations thereof. The results of single-polarized VV data show that the regions with the maximum sensitivity and high quality index, simultaneously, to soil moisture are in the forward off-specular direction. However, due to the effect of surface roughness and surface autocorrelation function (ACF), the single-polarized data have some limitations for soil moisture inversion. By contrast, the results of two different polarization combinations, as well as a dual-angular simulation of one transmitter and two receivers, show significant estimation benefits. It can be seen that they all provide better ACF suppression capabilities, larger high-sensitivity area, and higher quality indices compared to single-polarized estimation. In addition, dual polarization or dual angular combined measurement provides the possibility of retrieving soil moisture in backward regions. These results are expected to contribute to the design of future bistatic observation systems.