An Improved Backscattering Theoretical Model for Snow Area

Abstract

Remote sensing has been studied for a long time to monitor the earth terrain. Remote sensing technology has been used globally in many different fields and one of the most popular area of study that uses remote sensing technology is snow monitoring. In previous researches, remote sensing has been modelled on snow area to study the scattering mechanisms of various scattering processes. In this paper, surface volume second order term that was dropped in previous study is derived, included and studied to observe the improvement in the surface volume backscattering coefficient. This new model is applied on snow layer above ground and the snow layer is modelled as a volume of ice particles as the Mie scatterers that are closely packed and bounded by irregular boundaries. Various parameters are used to investigate the improvement of adding the new term. Results show improvement in cross-polarized return, for all the range of parameters studied. Comparison is made with the field measurement result from U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in 1990. Close agreement is shown between developed model and data field backscattering coefficient result.