Modeling passive and active microwave remote sensing of snow using DMRT theory with rough surface boundary conditions

The microwave signatures of a layer of dry snow overlying ground with a rough surface are computed. We use dense medium radiative transfer (DMRT) theory with Quasicrystalline approximation (QCA) for densely distributed sticky moderate size particles to calculate the volume scattering in snow. The rough surface scattering and emission are modeled by the Numerical Maxwell Model of 3D simulations (NMM3D), which is accelerated by fast computation method known as with Sparse-Matrix Canonical Grid method (SMCG). The bistatic scattering coefficients of rough surfaces are used as the boundary conditions for the DMRT. Both active and passive cases are studied.