Active Reflector for Radar Calibration

An active radar calibrator (ARC), consisting of a receive-antenna and a transmit-antenna, with an RF amplifier in between, is proposed as a tool for conducting high-precision calibration measurements of radar systems. The ARC can be designed to have a large radar cross section and a broad pattern. Its major advantages over passive reflectors are its small physical size and its suitability for calibrating radars that operate in any polarization configuration.     

External Calibration of SIR-B Imagery with Area-Extended and Point Targets

Data takes on two ascending orbits of the Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B) over an agricultural test site in west-central Illinois were used to establish end-to-end transfer functions for conversion of the digital numbers on the 8-bit image to values of the radar backscattering coefficient ?0 (m2/m2) in dB. The transfer function for each data take was defined by the SIR-B response to an array of six calibrated point targets of known radar cross section (transponders) and to a large number of area-extended targets also with known radar cross section as measured by externally calibrated, truck-mounted scatterometers. The radar cross section of each transponder at the SIR-B center frequency was measured on an antenna range as a function of the local angle of incidence. Two truck-mounted scatterometers observed 20-80 agricultural fields daily at 1.6 GHz with HH-polarization and at azimuth viewing angles and incidence angles equivalent to those of the SIR-B. The form of the transfer function is completely defined by the SIR-B receiver and the incoherent averaging procedure incorporated into production of the standard SIR-B image product. Assuming that the processing properly accounts for the antenna gain, all transfer function coefficients are known except for the thermal noise power and a system " constant" that has been shown to vary as a function of uncommanded changes in the effective SIR-B transmit power.     

Improvement of Moisture Estimation Accuracy of Vegetation-Covered Soil by Combined Active/Passive Microwave Remote Sensing

The measured effects of vegetation canopies on radar and radiometric sensitivity to soil moisture are compared to first-order emission and scattering models. The models are found to predict the measured emission and backscattering with reasonable accuracy for various crop canopies at frequencies between 1.4 and 5.0 GHz, especially at angles of incidence less than 30°. The vegetation loss factor L (?) increases with frequency and is found to be dependent upon canopy type and water content. In addition, the effective radiometric power absorption coefficient of a mature corn canopy is roughly 1.75 times that calculated for the radar at the same frequency. Comparison of an L-band radiometer with a C-band radar shows the two systems to be complementary in terms of accurate soil moisture sensing over the extreme range of naturally occurring soil-moisture conditions. The combination of both an L-band radiometer and a C-band radar is expected to yield soil-moisture estimates that are accurate to better than +/-30 percent of true soil moisture, even for a soil under a lossy crop canopy such as mature corn. This is true even without any other ancillary information.     

The use of a helicopter mounted ranging scatterometer forestimation of extinction and backscattering properties of forestcanopies. I. Experimental approach and calibration

A helicopter-borne C-band scatterometer with the capability of collecting the backscattered power as a function of range is described. This instrument was repeatedly flown from May to September 1984 to study the microwave properties of forest canopies of aspen and black spruce in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. The characteristics of the instrument, its calibration, the data collection, and reprocessing, are described     

Microwave Emission from Row Crops

In order to examine the emission properties of vegetation without taking into consideration the effects of variations in the soil background, strips of metal screening were used to cover the soil surface between adjacent rows of plants. Temporal measurements were made at 2.7 and 5.1 GHz for soybean, wheat, and corn canopies. Several special experiments were conducted to evaluate the sensitivity of brightness temperature to look direction (relative to row direction), polarization configuration, and incidence angle, and to evaluate the emission contributions of defoliated stalks. In general, the results show that the canopy is highly anisotropic, the emission exhibits a strong dependence on polarization and look direction, and the scattering albedo is typically less than 0.1. Canopy transmissivity was estimated from the radiometric observations and then related empirically to the canopy's integrated water content. Using this relation in a zero-order radiative transfer model led to good agreement between the experimental observations and the model predictions.