Simulating the Backscattering of L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar from a Wheat Field using Smapvex12 Data

This study evaluate the performance of a Wheat Canopy Scattering Model (WCSM) at L-band, which was initially developed to simulate the backscatter of C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), using the L-band UAVSAR data and ground-based measurements of soil moisture, soil surface roughness and crop parameters collected from wheat fields during the SMAPVEX12 field campaign. Results show that WCSM is capable of estimating HH-pol backscatter with an error less than 2.48 dB. On the other hand, relatively large RMSE of 4.38 dB and 4.34 dB were observed for VV and VH backscatter coefficients, respectively. Furthermore, it was observed that model tends to overestimate VV backscatter. It is also observed that co-pol total backscatter from a wheat canopy is sensitive to incidence angle followed by root mean square (RMS) height and soil moisture while cross-pol backscatter showing high sensitivity to wheat crop biophysical parameters.