Use of Satellite Radar Bistatic Measurements for Crop Monitoring: A Simulation Study on Corn Fields

This paper presents a theoretical study of microwave remote sensing of vegetated surfaces. The purpose of this study is to find out if satellite bistatic radar systems can provide a performance, in terms of sensitivity to vegetation geophysical parameters, equal to or greater than the performance of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 864 - 890
Main Authors Guerriero, Leila, Pierdicca, Nazzareno, Pulvirenti, Luca, Ferrazzoli, Paolo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2013
Subjects
bistatic radar
crop status
new measurement concept
Remote sensing
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:This paper presents a theoretical study of microwave remote sensing of vegetated surfaces. The purpose of this study is to find out if satellite bistatic radar systems can provide a performance, in terms of sensitivity to vegetation geophysical parameters, equal to or greater than the performance of monostatic systems. Up to now, no suitable bistatic data collected over land surfaces are available from satellite, so that the electromagnetic model developed at Tor Vergata University has been used to perform simulations of the scattering coefficient of corn, over a wide range of observation angles at L- and C-band. According to the electromagnetic model, the most promising configuration is the one which measures the VV or HH bistatic scattering coefficient on the plane that lies at the azimuth angle orthogonal with respect to the incidence plane. At this scattering angle, the soil contribution is minimized, and the effects of vegetation growth are highlighted.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs5020864