Remote sensing of Earth's surface roughness at microwave frequency

Abstract

An outdoor observation bed was prepared in the vicinity of the Department of Electronics Engineering, Banaras Hindu University for the study of the effect of surface roughness on remote sensing of normalised brightness temperature. Experimentally observed data was utilized to give a simple linear model for regression analysis. Brightness temperature was normalised with surface temperature to give normalised brightness temperature (NTB). Observed NTB was correlated with the calculated values, where dependent variable was taken as surface roughness. These two paarameters give a linear relationship for computing regression parameters. We have also computed values of NTB for various look angles. The results from the regression analysis which was for higher surface roughness at constant soil moisture are found to be close to the experimental values. We conclude that the best fit angle for observing surface roughness from satellite is nearly 50° for both polarizations (HH-pol and VV-pol). © 1995.