Semi-empirical calibration of the integral equation model for co-polarized L-band backscattering

The objective of this paper is to extend the semi-empirical calibration of the backscattering Integral Equation Model (IEM) initially proposed for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data at C- and X-bands to SAR data at L-band. A large dataset of radar signal and in situ measurements (soil moisture and surface roughness) over bare soil surfaces were used. This dataset was collected over numerous agricultural study sites in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and Italy using various SAR sensors (AIRSAR, SIR-C, JERS-1, PALSAR-1, ESAR). Results showed slightly better simulations with exponential autocorrelation function than with Gaussian function and with HH than with VV. Using the exponential autocorrelation function, the mean difference between experimental data and Integral Equation Model (IEM) simulations is +0.4 dB in HH and -1.2 dB in VV with a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) about 3.5 dB. In order to improve the modeling results of the IEM for a better use in the inversion of SAR data, a semi-empirical calibration of the IEM was performed at L-band in replacing the correlation length derived from field experiments by a fitting parameter. Better agreement was observed between the backscattering coefficient provided by the SAR and that simulated by the calibrated version of the IEM (RMSE about 2.2 dB).