GEOPHYSICAL PARAMETER RETRIEVAL FOR MICROWAVE C BAND SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR (SAR) DATASET USING INTEGRAL EQUATION MODEL

Abstract

The microwave remote sensing is highly useful, as it provides synoptic observation of the Earth’s surface or planetary bodies, regardless of day or night and the atmospheric conditions, propagation through ionosphere with minimum loss. One of the best microwave technology for imaging system is the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing. The microwave SAR currently represents the best approach for obtaining spatially distributed geophysical parameter present on the Earth’s surface or planetary bodies. In the present work, geophysical parameters viz., Soil Moisture, Surface Roughness, Dielectric Constant (ε) and Backscattering Coefficients (σ0) will be retrieved. The modelling makes the process of estimating information beyond the real observation range for data interpretation. In the present paper most widely used modelling techniques for the microwave SAR dataset is an Integral Equation Model (IEM) which is implemented for above said geophysical parameters retrieval. The aim of the present work is to estimate accurate, reliable and skillful measurements of geophysical parameters from the microwave SAR dataset. In the present study microwave C band SAR dataset is used. The overall processing was done by using PolSARPro Ver. 5.0 software. In the present work, geophysical parameters are measured with the help IEM modelling, the statistical parameter and occurrence plane, estimated from the microwave SAR image, which was very helpful for retrieving geophysical parameters. From the overall paper work, it was concluded that the IEM modelling is a one of the realistic modelling methods for retrieving geophysical parameters for microwave C band SAR dataset.