Theoretical Characterization of X-band Full Polarimetric SAR data from Rice Paddies in terms of Incidence Angles

摘要

For many Asian countries, a rice crop monitoring plays a key role to realize stable food supply. Because of its flexible operabiliry with wide swath, SAR remote sensing has been attractive as an efficient monitoring tool. Though the SAR data analysis for rice crop monitoring has been intensively studied, it still has non-negligible mysteries due to its difficulty to link the radar signature to specific physical parameters such as a growth situation. To solve the problems, it is essential to conduct theoretical characterization of experimentally obtained radar backscatter from rice paddies. In this paper, the rice paddies were observed by a high resolution X-band SAR, Polarimetric and Interferometric SAR 2 (Pi-SAR2), by systematically varying the observation parameters such as incidence angle and polarization. The obtained features based on many sample points in Niigata city indicate that the dominant scattering mechanisms are gradually varied in terms of incidence angles.