RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SURFACE ROUGHNESS PARAMETERS AND THE RADAR BACKSCATTER OF A BARE SURFACE

Whereas it is well known that the surface roughness parameters, the RMS height and the correlation length, of a natural soil surface are underestimated with a short surface profile, it is not clear how much the underestimated surface parameters affect the backscattering coefficients of the surface for various incidence angles and polarizations. The backscattering coefficients of simulated and measured surface profiles are computed using the integral equation method (IEM) and analyzed in this paper to answer this question. It is shown that the RMS error of the backscattering coefficients between 5-m- and 1-m-long measured surface profiles is 1.7 dB for vv-polarization and 0.5 dB for hh-polarization at a medium range of incidence angle ($15^{\circ}{\leq}{\theta}{\leq}70^{\circ}$), while the surface roughness parameters are significantly reduced; from 2.4 cm to 1.5 cm for the RMS height s and from 35.1 cm to 10.0 cm for the autocorrelation length l. This result is verified with numerous simulations with various roughness conditions and various wavelengths.