Measuring the surface roughness of geological rock surfaces in SAR data using fractal geometry

摘要

Determining surface morphology using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data requiresrnaccurate topographic and microtopographic models. To distinguish different surfacerngeometric patterns and to differentiate the formation of geological rock surfaces, it isrnnecessary to model the smoothness and roughness of surfaces based on radar signalrnbackscattering. Euclidean geometry is less able than fractal geometry to describe naturalrnphenomena; however, in application to radar backscattering models, fractal geometry hasrnnever fully replaced Euclidean geometry. Using fractal geometry only, this paper attemptsrnto improve the backscattering simulation generated by an Integral Equation Model tornimprove the description of geological rock surfaces. As the application of radar signalrnbackscattering is a rarity in the domain of geology, the paper also discusses the efficiencyrnof the method in improving the results of conventional geological mapping methods. Thernproposed method is applied to the Anaran geological formation (between Dehloran andrnIlam in IRAN) using TerraSAR-X SAR data and in situ roughness measurements on purernsites with rough, intermediate, and smooth morphologies. This implementation showsrnfractal and diffractal behavior of geological morphologies under various conditions.