Search Results (2)

Similar to light detection and ranging (lidar), profile radar can detect forest vertical structure directly. Recently, the first Ku-band profile radar system designed for forest applications, called Tomoradar, has been developed and evaluated in boreal forest. However, the physical relationships between the waveform and forest structure parameters such as height, leaf area index (LAI), and aboveground biomass are still unclear, which limits later forestry applications. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a theoretical model to simulate the relationship and interpret the mechanism behind. In this study, we extend the Radiosity Applicable to Porous IndiviDual objects (RAPID2) model to simulate the profile radar waveform of forest stands. The basic assumption is that the scattering functions of major components within forest canopy are similar between profile radar and the side-looking radar implemented in RAPID2, except several modifications. These modifications of RAPID2 mainly include: (a) changing the observation angle from side-looking to nadir-looking; (b) enhancing the ground specular scattering in normal direction using Fresnel coefficient; (c) increasing the timing resolution and recording waveform. The simulated waveforms were evaluated using two plots of Tomoradar waveforms at co- and cross- polarizations, which are collected in thin and dense forest stands respectively. There is a good agreement (R² ≥ 0.80) between the model results and experimental waveforms in HH and HV polarization modes and two forest scenes. After validation, the extended RAPID2 model was used to explore the sensitivity of the stem density, single tree LAI, crown shape, and twig density on the penetration depth in the Ku-band. Results indicate that the backscattering of the profile radar penetrates deeper than previous studies of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and the penetration depth tends to be several meters in Ku-band. With the increasing of the needle and twig density in the microwave propagation path, the penetration depth decreases gradually. It is worth noting that variation of stem density seems to have the least effect on the penetration depth, when there is no overlapping between the single tree crowns. Full article

Focusing on scattering from natural media, dihedral (double bounce) scattering is often characterized as a soil-trunk double Fresnel reflection, like for instance, in most model-based decompositions. As soils are predominantly rough in agriculture, the classical Rank 1 dihedral scattering component has to be extended to account for soil roughness-induced depolarization. Therefore, an azimuthal Line of Sight (LoS) rotation is applied solely on the soil plane of the double-bounce reflection to generate a depolarized dihedral scattering signal in agriculture. The results of the sensitivity analysis are shown for a distributed target in coherency matrix representation. It reveals that the combination of coherency matrix elements T_22XD + T_33XD is quasi-independent of the roughness-induced depolarization, while (T_22XD − T_33XD)/(T_22XD + T_33XD) is quasi-independent of the dielectric properties of the reflecting media. Therefore, a depolarization-independent retrieval of soil moisture or a direct roughness retrieval from the extended dihedral scattering component might be possible in stalk-dominated agriculture under certain conditions (e.g., the influence of a differential phase stays at a low level: ϕ < 15°). The first analyses with L-band airborne-SAR data of DLR’s E-SAR and F-SAR systems in agricultural regions during the AgriSAR, OPAQUE, SARTEO and TERENO project campaigns state the existence and potential of the extended Fresnel scattering mechanism to represent dihedral scattering between a rough (tilled) soil and the stalks of the agricultural plants. Full article