Experimental studies on phase distributions of two co-polarized signals scattered from a two-dimensional rough surface

Recently, the importance of the phase difference between two co-polarized scattered signals (φ_vv-φ_hh) has been recognized in geophysical remote sensing, and experimental and theoretical studies were conducted to understand the relationship between the rough surface characteristics and the phase distribution, Sarabandi et al. (1991). These experiments were conducted using soil surfaces of different characteristics at L-, C- and X-bands, and the statistical parameters of the surfaces, such as rms height and correlation length, were measured from a small sample. In the present paper, the experiment results of the phase statistics of millimeter-wave scattered from a two-dimensional rough surface of controlled surface roughness statistics is presented. It is shown that the distribution of φ_vv-φ_hh strongly related to the surface roughness statistics