Estimation of Soil Electric Properties and Water Content Through PolSAR Target Decomposition

Abstract

A new method is proposed to recover the electric properties and water content of ground soil by applying the Target Decomposition (TD) theory for Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) images. The proposed method depends on the ϵ-σ characteristic curves of the soil which are unique for each soil type at a specific frequency. This method is examined for the clayey type soil which is found in most naturally vegetated land areas. Also, a novel method is developed for the realistic simulation of PolSAR images of natural lands, including forest regions, grasslands, and bare lands being prepared for gardens or crop cultivation. This method is based on the reverse of the PolSAR TD theory. The numerical results presented in this paper are concerned with the characterization of the most common type of clayey soil. Also, some of the numerical results presented in the present paper aim to achieve realistic PolSAR datasets using the inverse TD theory. Finally, some numerical results are presented for quantitative assessment of the method proposed to recover the properties and water content of the clayey soil using the datasets which are obtained through realistic simulations of forested areas, gardens, grasslands, and bare lands being prepared for cultivated plants. It is found, through the numerical investigations and quantitative assessment, that the dielectric constant, electric conductivity and water content of the investigated clayey types of soil are accurately estimated.