Active and Passive Remote Sensing of Ice
Abstract
Strong permittivity fluctuation theory is used to solve the problem of scattering from a medium composed of completely randomly oriented scatters under the low frequency limit. A multivariate K-distribution, well supported by experimental data, is proposed to model the statistics of fully polarimetric radar clutter of earth terrain. The three-layer configuration is first reduced to two-layers to observe fully polarimetric scattering directly from geophysical media such as snow, ice, and vegetation. The effects on polarimetric wave scattering due to the top layer are identified by comparing the three-layer results with those obtained from the two-layer configuration. The theory is used to investigate the effects on polarimetric radar returns due to a low-loss and a lossy dry-snow layers covering a sheet of thick first-year sea ice. Polarimetric terrain backscattering data observed with satellite and airborne synthetic aperture radars (SAR) have demonstrated potential applications in geologic mapping and terrain cover classification. The three-layer random medium model is developed for microwave remote sensing of snow-covered sea ice. A radar clutter model is used to simulate fully polarimetric returns for a stepped frequency radar. The purpose is to create synthetic site dependent clutter signatures that can be utilized in a hardware-in-the-loop test system. Earth terrains are modeled by a two-layer configuration to investigate the polarimetric scattering properties of the remotely sensed media. (jhd)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 21, 1989
- Accession Number
- ADA214863
Entities
People
- Jinau Kong
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology