Uniaxial Effective Permittivity of Anisotropic Bicontinuous Random Media Using NMM3D

In this letter, we generate anisotropic bicontinuous media with different vertical and horizontal correlation functions. With the computer-generated bicontinuous medium, we then use numerical solutions of Maxwell equations in 3-dimensions (NMM3D) to calculate the anisotropic effective permittivities and the effective propagation constants of V and H polarizations. The copolarization phase difference (CPD) of VV and HH is then derived. The CPDs have recently been applied to the retrieval of snow water equivalent, snow depth, and anisotropy. The NMM3D simulation results are also compared with the results of the strong permittivity fluctuations in the low frequency limit and compared against the Maxwell-Garnett mixing formula.

[1]  Irena Hajnsek,et al.  Interactive comment on “Anisotropy of seasonal snow measured by polarimetric phase differences in radar time series” by S. Leinss et al , 2015 .

[2]  Irena Hajnsek,et al.  Snow Water Equivalent of Dry Snow Measured by Differential Interferometry , 2015, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

[3]  Weng Cho Chew,et al.  A multiple scattering solution for the effective permittivity of a sphere mixture , 1990 .

[4]  A. Sihvola.  Mixing Rules with Complex Dielectric Coefficients , 2000 .

[5]  Martin Schneebeli,et al.  A general treatment of snow microstructure exemplified by an improved relation for the thermal conductivity , 2012 .

[6]  Kyle C. Koppenhoefer,et al.  Mie Scattering of Electromagnetic Waves , 2013 .

[7]  Irena Hajnsek,et al.  Snow Height Determination by Polarimetric Phase Differences in X-Band SAR Data , 2014, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

[8]  Simon Yueh,et al.  Electromagnetic Models of Co/Cross Polarization of Bicontinuous/DMRT in Radar Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Snow at X- and Ku-band for CoReH2O and SCLP Applications , 2012, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

[9]  Irena Hajnsek,et al.  Interferometric and polarimetric methods to determine SWE, fresh snow depth and the anisotropy of dry snow , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS).

[10]  Salvatore Torquato,et al.  Effective dielectric tensor for electromagnetic wave propagation in random media , 2007, 0709.1924.

[11]  Leung Tsang,et al.  Microwave Scattering and Medium Characterization for Terrestrial Snow With QCA–Mie and Bicontinuous Models: Comparison Studies , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[12]  C. Mätzler.  Relation Between Grain Size and Correlation Length of Snow , 2002 .

[13]  Jin Au Kong,et al.  Correlation function studies for snow and ice , 1981 .

[14]  J. Kong,et al.  Scattering of electromagnetic waves from random media with strong permittivity fluctuations. [with application to atmospheric turbulence effects on microwave remote sensing] , 1981 .

[15]  Simon Yueh,et al.  Dense Media Radiative Transfer Applied to SnowScat and SnowSAR , 2014, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.

[16]  H. Löwe,et al.  Interfacial and structural relaxations of snow under isothermal conditions , 2011, Journal of Glaciology.

[17]  Berk Nf,et al.  Scattering properties of the leveled-wave model of random morphologies. , 1991 .

[18]  Leung Tsang,et al.  Electromagnetic Scattering by Bicontinuous Random Microstructures With Discrete Permittivities , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.