Electromagnetic Simulation of Volume Scattering for Monitoring the Height of Natural Grass using PolSAR Radar Vegetation Index

Abstract

Abstract The present work proposes a new method for monitoring the natural grass height through the fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data. For electromagnetic simulation, the grassland area is modelled as a cloud of random curly strips with high conductivity. The physical problem of electromagnetic scattering of plane waves of vertical and horizontal polarizations from ensemble of random structures representing the grasslands are solved using the electric field integral equation (EFIE) with the method of moments (MoM). The ensemble average of the fully polarimetric backscattering coefficients is calculated and the corresponding radar vegetation index (RVI) is estimated. It is shown that the ensemble average of the RVI is strongly correlated to the average height of the grass model. It is found that the relation between the grass height and the corresponding RVI can be approximated to either linear or quadratic dependence with 95% confidence level.