An empirical model and an inversion technique for radar scattering from bare soil surfaces

Polarimetric radar measurements were conducted for bare soil surfaces under a variety of roughness and moisture conditions at L-, C-, and X-band frequencies at incidence angles ranging from 10 to 70 deg. Using a laser profiler and dielectric probes, a complete and accurate set of ground truth data were collected for each surface condition, from which accurate measurements were made of the rms height, correlation length, and dielectric constant. Based on knowledge of the scattering behavior in limiting cases and the experimental observations, an empirical model was developed which was found to yield very good agreement with the backscattering measurements of this study, as well as with measurements reported in other investigations. An inversion technique for predicting the rms height of the surface and its moisture content from multipolarized radar observations is developed on the basis of the model.