Forest biomass monitoring with GNSS-R: Theoretical simulations

GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) is a remote sensing technique which performs bistatic measurements of the earth surface scattering. This paper presents some theoretical simulations of the specular scattering coefficient of a forested area, with the aim of demonstrating the potentiality of GNSS-R in monitoring forest biomass. The study is performed by means of an electromagnetic model developed in the past years and tested over several vegetation covered sites in its active and passive version. Here, after showing a comparison between model results and measurements over a forest site in the monostatic configuration, and after summarizing other previous validations, the extension to the specular configuration, typical of GNSS-R systems, will be presented. Namely, simulations are carried out at circular polarization and a sensitivity analysis of the received power in the specular configuration to some soil and forest parameters is shown.     

基于GNSS-R的裸土圆极化散射特性研究

GNSS-R是利用导航卫星的反射信号对地物参数进行遥感的新兴对地观测方式。针对其特有的圆极化散射方式，以双站散射的高级积分方程模型为工具，利用极化合成的方法将随机粗糙地表面圆极化散射模型转换为可以计算各种极化的微波散射模型。重点模拟分析了不同土壤水分含量下，裸土在不同观测几何时的圆极化散射特性。随机粗糙地表面圆极化散射模型的发展在某种程度上填补了GNSS-R领域机理模型的空缺，为后续土壤水分的进一步反演提供了机理工具。      

全极化散射计极化失真误差校正方法

全极化散射计是一种新型微波散射计，可以同时测量目标的同极化和交叉极化散射系数.一方面能够解决传统散射计在海面风场反演中的风向模糊问题，提高海面风场测量精度，另一方面交叉极化散射系数可以有效提高海面风速测量范围，解决台风灾害监测和预报问题.利用全极化散射计数据进行高精度海面风场反演，首先需要解决全极化散射计系统极化失真误差导致无法准确测量目标不同极化散射系数的问题.本文基于全极化散射计信号模型推导了极化失真误差影响下极化散射系数模型，并对极化失真误差影响进行了定量分析.在极化散射系数模型基础上，通过引入海面散射特性假设和极化定标技术推导了极化散射系数校正模型.基于RADARSAT-2获取的不同区域海面全极化散射系数数据仿真误差影响下极化散射系数并利用该模型进行校正，结果表明该方法可以有效校正极化失真误差，显著提高极化散射系数测量精度.      

Microwave specular scattering response of soil texture at X-band

Soil texture is an important soil parameter that is useful for meteorology, climatology, hydrology, ecology, etc. Therefore, it is important to classify soil based on soil texture (i.e., sand, silt and clay). A lot of studies with radar remote sensing have been carried out to estimate soil moisture and surface roughness, but less attention has been given to study the effect of individual soil texture on radar scattering, especially in specular direction. The main aim of this paper is to check the behavior of specular scattering with change in soil texture. This effect has also been analyzed in presence of soil moisture and surface roughness. Scattering coefficient has been retrieved for various soil texture fields with indigenously designed X-band bistatic scatterometer for a range of incidence angles (from 30° to 70° in steps of 10°) in both like polarizations, i.e., HH-polarization and VV-polarization. Observations were made at 10 GHz frequency. Four different fields were considered on the basis of soil texture variations; especially changes in sand percentage were made. Roughness (smooth soil to 1.4 cm rms surface height) and moisture (dry soil to 0.21 cm³ cm⁻³ volumetric soil moisture) conditions of these fields were varied for observations. Strong change in specular scattering coefficient is observed by changing the sand percentage in soil for HH-polarization, while in case of VV-polarization a lesser change is observed. Also a high change in specular scattering coefficient is noticed once moisture is added to the soil. It is difficult to observe the change in specular scattering coefficient with change in soil texture when surface is considered as rough. Therefore, it is important to minimize the roughness effect while observing the texture with specular scattering. For this purpose, polarization study was carried out to see how polarization can be helpful to minimize the roughness effect. The effect of soil texture on copolarization ratio is critically analyzed, and it is observed that for higher incidence angle (50°), the distinction in soil texture fields are clearly observable on the basis of copolarization ratio. This type of study will be helpful in near future to design the bistatic radar system for soil parameter monitoring, especially for cartwheel satellite system.     

Improved specular point prediction precision using gradient descent algorithm

Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (GNSS-R) utilizes GNSS signals reflected off the Earth surface for remote sensing applications. Due to weak power of reflected signals, GNSS-R receiver needs to track reflected signals by open loop. The first step is to calculate the position of specular point. The specular point position error of the existing algorithm—Quasi-Spherical Earth (QSE) Approach—is about 3 km which may cause troubles in data post-processing. In this paper, gradient descent algorithm is applied to calculate position of specular point and the calculation is based on World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) ellipsoid in geodetic coordinate. The benefit of this coordinate is that it is easy to investigate the effect of real surface’s altitude. Learning rate—the key parameter of the algorithm—is adaptively adjusted according to initial error, latitude and gradient descent rate. With self-adaptive learning rate strategy, the algorithm converges fast. Through simulation and test on Global Navigation Satellite System Occultation Sounder II (GNOS II), the performances of the algorithm are validated. The specular point position error of the proposed algorithm is about 10 m. The speed of the proposed algorithm is competitive compared with the existing algorithm. The test on GNOS II shows that the proposed algorithm has good real-time performance.     

Retrieval of crop variables with field-based X-band microwave remote sensing of ladyfinger

Modeling in agriculture has been widely used to retrieve and monitor various soil and crop growth variables. Remote sensing, especially radar sensors can be useful for temporal and spatial monitoring of the soil and plant variables. Therefore, in this paper field measurements of crop ladyfinger were carried out to examine the dependency of radar backscatter on crop–soil variables and to develop a method for monitoring and retrieving crop variables for ladyfinger. A crop-bed was prepared to observe scatterometer response in the angular range of incidence angle 20–70° at 9.89 GHz in the X-band for VV- and HH-polarization. At the same time, soil moisture, plant height, leaf area index and aboveground biomass were measured at various growth stages of crop ladyfinger. The angular variation of scattering coefficient decreases with the age of crop ladyfinger shows the dominance of crop effect on soil moisture effect at the older age. Thus, angular trends are more flat as the plant grows since the effects of soil is masked by developing vegetation. Scattering coefficient increases with the increase of leaf area index for both polarizations (i.e. VV- and HH-). It was found that leaf area index and aboveground biomass of crop ladyfinger are highly correlated with microwave frequency more than with plant height and soil moisture. Leaf area index and biomass of ladyfinger crop were retrieved by polarization based model and non-linear least square optimization model. These two models gave very good results for the retrieval of leaf area index and aboveground biomass.     

Comparison of diurnal,seasonal and latitudinal effect of MUF VR and NmF2 VR during some solar cycle epochs

The diurnal and seasonal changes of the variability (VR) of Maximum Useable Frequency (MUF) are compared with those of peak electron density (NmF2) at Ibadan (7.4°N, 3.9°E, 6°S dip) in the African sector. Also compared is the latitudinal effect on both characteristics by combining data from Singapore (1.3°N, 103.8°E, 17.6°S dip) in the East Asian sector and Slough (51.5°N, 359.4°E, 66.5°S dip) in the European sector. MUF VR is found to be about half of NmF2 VR at all the hours and seasons and during the solar cycle epochs considered for the three stations. While nighttime MUF VR is greater in June Solstice and September Equinox during both low and moderate solar activities and in September Equinox and December Solstice during high solar activity, nighttime NmF2 VR is greater in June Solstice and September Equinox during high solar activity and greater at the equinoxes during low and moderate solar activities. This signifies a shift in nighttime MUF peak VR from the middle six months during low and moderate solar activities to the last half of the year during high solar activity. Daytime VR of both characteristics are not observed to show any seasonal variation. MUF VR and that of NmF2 are found to increase and decrease alternately with the Zurich sunspot number (Rz) for Ibadan and Singapore. For Slough, the VR of both characteristics increases with Rz during the first half of the day. It then increases and decreases alternately with Rz during the remaining hours of the day. While nighttime MUF VR decreases with latitude, just like nighttime NmF2 VR, no latitudinal effect is found for daytime VR of both characteristics.     

Effective non-vertical and apparent cutoff rigidities for a cosmic ray latitude survey from Antarctica to Italy in minimum of solar activity

In this paper we will report the results of the computation of cutoff rigidities of vertical and non-vertical incident cosmic ray particles. Non-vertical effective cutoff rigidities have been computed by tracing particle trajectories through the “real” geomagnetic magnetic field comprising the International Geomagnetic Reference Field model (IGRF95, IAGA Division 5 Working Group 8, 1996: Sabaka, T.J., Langel, R.A., Baldwin, R.T., Conrad, J.A. The geomagnetic field, 1900–1995, including the large scale fields from magnetospheric sources and NASA candidate models for the 1995 IGRF revision. J. Geomag. Geoelect. 49, 157–206, 1997.) and the Tsyganenko [Tsyganenko, N.A. A magnetospheric magnetic field model with a warped tail current sheet. Planet. Space Sci. 37, 5–20, 1989.] magnetosphere model. The computation have been done for the backward route (from Antarctica to Italy) of the Italian Antarctic ship survey 1996–1997, for geographic points corresponding to the daily average coordinates of the ship; for zenith angles 15°, 30°, 45° and 60°, and azimuth angles from 0° to 360° in steps of 45°. By means of the obtained non-vertical cutoffs the apparent cutoff rigidities have been calculated. The information on integral multiplicities of secondary neutrons detected by the neutron monitor in dependence of the zenith angle of incoming primary cosmic ray particles have also been used. This information is based on the theoretical calculations of meson-nuclear cascades of primary protons with different rigidities arriving to the Earth’s atmosphere at the zenith angles of 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75°. The difference between the computed apparent and vertical cutoff rigidities reaches ∼1 GV at rigidities >7–8 GV. At rigidities of 10–16 GV, the difference between the apparent and vertical cutoff rigidities is larger than that obtained earlier by Clem et al. [Clem, J.M., Bieber, J.W., Duldig, M., Evenson, P., Hall, D., Humble, J.E. Contribution of obliquely incident particles to neutron monitor counting rate. J. Geophys. Res. 102, 26919–26926, 1997.] and Dorman et al. [Dorman, L.I., Villoresi, G., Iucci, N., Parisi, M., Tyasto, M.I., Danilova, O.A., Ptitsyna, N.G. Cosmic ray survey to Antarctica and coupling functions for neutron component near solar minimum (1996–1997), 3. Geomagnetic effects and coupling functions. J. Geophys. Res. 105, 21047–21056, 2000.].     

On the influence of rough water surfaces on polarimetric investigations of aerosols from space

The equation of radiative transfer is solved for the complete Stokes' vector in order to study the polarization of solar radiation on top of a turbid atmosphere.The surface characteristics (bidirectional anisotropy and polarization properties of randomly oriented water surface elements) are contained in the lower boundary condition of the integro-differential equation. Results of surface model calculations are compared with polarimeter measurements of a natural scenario.On top of the atmosphere the degree of polarization is found to depend generally on the turbidity of the atmosphere. The degree of polarization reaches its maximum in the vicinity of the angle of specular reflection on the water surface, if the sun's zenith distance is about the Brewster's angle.According to the model calculations observation angles can be found where the degree of polarization does not depend on the surface roughness. Apparently these angles have to be preferred for determination of the atmospheric turbidity.