A SAR interferometric model for soil moisture

Abstract

There is a need for scattering models that link quantitatively synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometric observables to soil moisture. In this paper, we propose a model based on plane waves and the Born approximation, deriving first the vertical complex wavenumbers in the soil as a function of geometrical and dielectric properties and successively the complex interferometric coherences. It is observed that soil moisture behaves on the phase in a similar way as tomography does, breaking the phase consistency in triplets of interferograms. The proposed model is validated with L-band airborne SAR data; preliminary inversion results based on interferogram triplets and coherence magnitudes are presented.