Multi-angular ground-based SAR system for soil surface roughness characterisation

A ground-based (GB) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is proposed for soil surface roughness discrimination at the C-band. By using this GB-SAR system, the multi-angular SAR measurement is realised at different resolution cell sizes. The specific levels of surface roughness are set deliberately to analyse the roughness contribution on the multi-angular SAR signature in a controlled experimental condition. Based on the GB-SAR measurement, the effect of incidence angle on SAR sensitivity is studied under two resolution cell sizes for retrieving soil surface roughness. The results show that, the using the GB-SAR system, the high incidence angle configuration (e.g. > 40°) is optimal to discriminate surface roughness, which is more significant at small resolution cell sizes (e.g. 30 cm). This study indicates the effectivity of the GB-SAR system to validate the SAR backscattering mechanisms.