An Approach to Extended Fresnel Scattering for Modeling of Depolarizing Soil-Trunk Double-Bounce Scattering

Focusing on scattering from natural media, dihedral (double bounce) scattering is often characterized as a soil-trunk double Fresnel reflection, like for instance, in most model-based decompositions. As soils are predominantly rough in agriculture, the classical Rank 1 dihedral scattering component has to be extended to account for soil roughness-induced depolarization. Therefore, an azimuthal Line of Sight (LoS) rotation is applied solely on the soil plane of the double-bounce reflection to generate a depolarized dihedral scattering signal in agriculture. The results of the sensitivity analysis are shown for a distributed target in coherency matrix representation. It reveals that the combination of coherency matrix elements T22XD + T33XD is quasi-independent of the roughness-induced depolarization, while (T22XD − T33XD)/(T22XD + T33XD) is quasi-independent of the dielectric properties of the reflecting media. Therefore, a depolarization-independent retrieval of soil moisture or a direct roughness retrieval from the extended dihedral scattering component might be possible in stalk-dominated agriculture under certain conditions (e.g., the influence of a differential phase stays at a low level: φ < 15◦). The first analyses with L-band airborne-SAR data of DLR’s E-SAR and F-SAR systems in agricultural regions during the AgriSAR, OPAQUE, SARTEO and TERENO project campaigns state the existence and potential of the extended Fresnel scattering mechanism to represent dihedral scattering between a rough (tilled) soil and the stalks of the agricultural plants.