Seasonal and Look-directional Variation of X-band SAR Sigma Nought in Mongolian Land Surface

This paper presents TerraSAR-X and KOMPSAT-5 sigma nought variation according to season and antenna observation configuration in Mongolia. Two types of landcover including bare surface and cropland were examined. The seasonal variation of sigma nought in cropland was about 7 dB and particularly a significant sigma nought reduction occurred after harvest. On the contrary, the Mongolia bare surface provides a consistent sigma nought values for several years with an annual variation less than 2.5 dB of standard deviation. However, the bare soil was relatively sensitive to look-direction (or ascending or descending mode) as well as incidence angle while the cropland was almost independent of antenna look-direction and small incidence angle changes. Although the look-directional variation of bare surface sigma nought was observed in this study, the look-direction anisotropic nature of the surface was not well examined. A further study would be required to account for this feature with various SAR observation configurations.