Electromagnetic Models of Co/Cross Polarization of Bicontinuous/DMRT in Radar Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Snow at X- and Ku-band for CoReH2O and SCLP Applications

Abstract

In this paper, we study the scattering properties of the terrestrial dry snow by modeling the snow structure as Bi-continuous media. The model is applied to study the snow scattering characteristics at X-band and Ku-band that are two frequencies in the proposed Cold Regions Hydrology High-resolution Observatory (CoReH2O) mission by ESA and the proposed Snow and Cold Land Process (SCLP) mission by NASA. There are two variables in the Bi-continuous media that can be adjusted to generate various snow microstructures. The different snow structures are illustrated. The extinction properties and phase matrices are studied through the Monte Carlo simulations. For each realization, the Maxwell Equations are solved numerically to take into account the coherent wave interactions among the inhomogeneties. We demonstrated the frequency dependences of scattering coefficients, which can vary depending on the setup parameters of the bicontinuous media. The power law are compared with experiment data of extinction coefficients of terrestrial snow. The calculated extinction and phase matrices are combined in the Dense Media Radiative Transfer theory (DMRT). We obtain the 1st order solution by using the iterative method. The surface scattering from the snow-ground interface is included by searching the look up table of NMM3D. The results of co-polarization and cross polarization are compared with the POLSCAT Ku-band airborne data and X-band TerraSAR-X satellite data in North Slope, Alaska.