Backscattering Analysis for Snow Remote Sensing Model with Higher Order of Surface-Volume Scattering

The study of earth terrain in Antarctica is important as this region has a direct impact on global environment and weather condition. There have been many research works in developing remote sensing technologies, as it can be used as an earth observation technique to monitor the polar region [11, 15]. In previous studies, remote sensing forward model has been developed to study and understand scattering mechanisms and sensitivity of physical parameters of snow and sea ice. This paper is an extended work from previous studies [16-19], where an improved theoretical model to study polar region was developed. Multiple-surface scattering, based on an existing integral equation model (IEM) that calculates surface scattering and additional second-order surface-volume scattering, were added in the model from prior research works [7] for improvement in the backscattering calculation. We present herein the application of this model on a snow layer above ground which is modeled as a volume of ice particles that are closely packed and bounded by irregular boundaries above a homogenous half space. The effect of including multiple surface scattering and additional surface-volume scattering up to second order in the backscattering coefficient calculation of snow layer is studied for co-polarized and cross-polarized returns. Comparisons with satellite data are also done for validation. Results show improvement in the total backscattering coefficient for cross-polarized return in the studied range, suggesting that multiple-surface scattering and surface-volume scattering up to second order are important scattering mechanisms in the snow layer and should not be ignored in polar research.