• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.34 no.1
• /
• pp.1-12
• /
• 2013

To effectively remove chaff echoes, which are often misidentified as precipitation echoes on weather radars, this study examines the relationship between the radar reflectivity and each of dual polarimetric parameters. The dual polarimetric parameters are collected only for the echo areas identified as chaff echoes on the NIMR X-band dual polarization radar. Overall, the polarimetric parameters (i.e., reflectivity, differential reflectivity, cross correlation coefficient, standard deviation of differential reflectivity and specific differential phase) for chaff echoes have a wider range of values than those for precipitation echoes and the chaff filaments tend to be horizontally oriented to radar beams. There appears to be a considerable overlap in the cross correlation coefficient range of chaff and precipitation echoes since some precipitation echoes have cross correlation coefficient lower than 0.8. Therefore, although the cross correlation coefficient is known to be a good variable in identifying and separating chaff echoes from precipitation echoes, it is suggested that additional care should be taken when using the cross correlation coefficient solely in removing chaff echoes.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.145-152
• /
• 2007

The polarimetric backscattering coefficients of a wet-land rice field which is an experimental plot belong to National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology in Suwon are measured using ground-based polarimetric scatterometers at 1.8 and 5.3 GHz throughout a growth year from transplanting period to harvest period (May to October in 2006). The polarimetric scatterometers consist of a vector network analyzer with time-gating function and polarimetric antenna set, and are well calibrated to get VV-, HV-, VH-, HH-polarized backscattering coefficients from the measurements, based on single target calibration technique using a trihedral corner reflector. The polarimetric backscattering coefficients are measured at $30^{\circ},\;40^{\circ},\;50^{\circ}\;and\;60^{\circ}$ with 30 independent samples for each incidence angle at each frequency. In the measurement periods the ground truth data including fresh and dry biomass, plant height, stem density, leaf area, specific leaf area, and moisture contents are also collected for each measurement. The temporal variations of the measured backscattering coefficients as well as the measured plant height, LAI (leaf area index) and biomass are analyzed. Then, the measured polarimetric backscattering coefficients are compared with the rice growth parameters. The measured plant height increases monotonically while the measured LAI increases only till the ripening period and decreases after the ripening period. The measured backscattering coefficientsare fitted with polynomial expressions as functions of growth age, plant LAI and plant height for each polarization, frequency, and incidence angle. As the incidence angle is bigger, correlations of L band signature to the rice growth was higher than that of C band signatures. It is found that the HH-polarized backscattering coefficients are more sensitive than the VV-polarized backscattering coefficients to growth age and other input parameters. It is necessary to divide the data according to the growth period which shows the qualitative changes of growth such as panicale initiation, flowering or heading to derive functions to estimate rice growth.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.44 no.5
• /
• pp.878-886
• /
• 2011

The soybean is one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world. Microwave remote sensing is an important tool because it can penetrate into cloud independent of weather and it can acquire day or night time data. Especially a ground-based polarimetric scatterometer has advantages of monitoring crop conditions continuously with full polarization and different frequencies. In this study, soybean growth parameters and soil moisture were estimated using polarimetric discrimination ratio (PDR) by radar scatterometer. A ground-based polarimetric scatterometer operating at multiple frequencies was used to continuously monitor the soybean growth condition and soil moisture change. It was set up to obtain data automatically every 10 minutes. The temporal trend of the PDR for all bands agreed with the soybean growth data such as fresh weight, Leaf Area Index, Vegetation Water Content, plant height; i.e., increased until about DOY 271 and decreased afterward. Soil moisture lowly related with PDR in all bands during whole growth stage. In contrast, PDR is relative correlated with soil moisture during below LAI 2. We also analyzed the relationship between the PDR of each band and growth data. It was found that L-band PDR is the most correlated with fresh weight (r=0.96), LAI (r=0.91), vegetation water content (r=0.94) and soil moisture (r=0.86). In addition, the relationship between C-, X-band PDR and growth data were moderately correlated ($r{\geq}0.83$) with the exception of the soil moisture. Based on the analysis of the relation between the PDR at L, C, X-band and soybean growth parameters, we predicted the growth parameters and soil moisture using L-band PDR. Overall good agreement has been observed between retrieved growth data and observed growth data. Results from this study show that PDR appear effective to estimate soybean growth parameters and soil moisture.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
• /
• v.47 no.2
• /
• pp.85-91
• /
• 2014

Ground-based polarimetric scatterometers have been effective tools to monitor the growth of crop with multi-polarization and frequencies and various incident angles. An important advantage of these systems that can be exploited is temporal observation of a specific crop target. Polarimetric backscatter data at L-, C- and X-bands were acquired every 10 minutes. We analyzed the relationships between L-, C- and X-band signatures, biophysical measurements over the whole corn growth period. The Vertical transmit and Vertical receive polarization (VV) backscattering coefficients for all bands were greater than those of the Horizontal transmit and Horizontal receive polarization (HH) until early-July, and then thereafter HH-polarization was greater than VV-polarization or Horizontal transmit and Vertical receive polarization (HV) until the harvesting stage (Day Of Year, DOY 240). The results of correlation analysis between the backscattering coefficients for all bands and corn growth data showed that L-band HH-polarization (L-HH) was the most suited for monitoring the fresh weight ($r=0.95^{***}$), dry weight ($r=0.95^{***}$), leaf area index ($r=0.86^{**}$), and vegetation water content ($r=0.93^{***}$). Retrieval equations were developed for estimating corn growth parameters using L-HH. The results indicated that L-HH could be used for estimating the vegetation biophysical parameters considered here with high accuracy. Those results can be useful in determining frequency and polarization of satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar stem and in designing a future ground-based microwave system for a long-term monitoring of corn.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.115-121
• /
• 2012

This paper presents a scattering model and measurements of backscattering coefficients for soybean fields. The polarimetric radar backscatters of a soybean field were measured using the ground-based X-band polarimetric scatterometer in an angular range from $20^{\circ}$ to $60^{\circ}$. The backscattering coefficients were also obtained using the COSMO-SkyMed (Spotlight mode, HH-polarization) from July to October 2010. The backscattering coefficients of the soybean field were computed using the 1st-order radiative transfer model (RTM) with field-measured input parameters. The soybean layer is composed of the stems, branches, leaves, and soybean pods. The stems, branches, and pods are modeled with lossy dielectric cylinders, the leaves are modeled with lossy dielectric disks. The estimated backscattering coefficients agree quite well with the field-measured radar backscattering coefficients.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.17 no.12 s.115
• /
• pp.1172-1180
• /
• 2006

The backscattering coefficients of a bare soil surface were measured using an R-band polarimetric scatterometer, which were used to verify the validities of scattering models and inversion algorithms. The soil moisture contents and the surface roughness parameters (the RMS height and correlation length) were also measured from the soil surface. The backscattering coefficients were obtained from several scattering models with these surface parameters, and the computation results were compared with the measured backscattering coefficients. The soil moisture contents of the surface were retrieved from the measured backscattering coefficients, and compared with the measured surface parameters. This paper shows how well the scattering models agree with the measurements, and also shows the inversion results.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.1-11
• /
• 2011

This study describes measurements of fast ice recorded on May 23, 2009, in Kongsfjorden (translated as 'Kongs Fjord'), an inlet on the west coast of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard Archipelago. Seasonal fast ice is an important feature for Svalbard fjords, both in relation to their physical environment and also the local ecosystem, since it grows seaward from the coast and remains in place throughout the winter. Ice thickness, snow, ice properties, and wind speed were measured, while SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) data was observed simultaneously observed two times from ALOS-PALSAR (L-band). Measured ice thickness was about 25-35 cm while the thickness of ice floe broken from fast ice was measured as 10-15 cm. Average salinity was 1.9-2.0 ppt during the melting period. Polarimetric data was used to extract H/A/alpha-angle parameters of fast ice, ice floe, snow and glacier, which was classified into 18 classes based on these parameters. It was established that the area of fast ice represents surface scattering which indicates low and medium entropy surface scatters such as Bragg and random surfaces, while fast ice covered with snow belongs to a zone of low entropy surface scattering similar to snow-covered land surfaces. The results of this study will contribute to various interpretations of interrelationships between H/A/alpha parameters and the wave scattering Phenomenon of sea ice.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.50.2-50.2
• /
• 2016

Polarization is a rich source of information on the physical properties of astronomical objects. In particular, scattered sunlight by optically thin media (e.g., cometary comae) shows linear polarization of light, which highly depends on the phase angle (an angle between the Sun-Comet-Earth), wavelengths, and physical properties of cometary dust particles such as size, composition, and structures. Here, we present a study of polarimetric properties of non-periodic comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) in optical and near-infrared wavelength regions obtained from imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetric observations taken on UT 2015 December 17 - 19 welcoming its (probably) first close approach to the Earth. In this presentation, we want to introduce our progress since the last Korean Astronomical Society meeting (at BEXCO, Busan, 2016 April 14 - 15) especially in terms of spatial variations of degree of linear polarization (DOLP) and its possible scenarios to explain the correlations with other observational results. In particular, we found that there is strong anti-correlation between the gas/dust flux ratio and DOLP at the cometocentric distance of $(2-5){\times}104 km$. Besides, within 10 arcseconds in radii (corresponding to inner coma region of 104 km from the center), the inverse relationship of these two parameters does not hold anymore. We conjecture that the rapid outward increase of DOLP can be supported by either the sublimation/evaporation of icy volatiles, disaggregation of cometary dust particles ejected from the nucleus, and/or difference of dominant dust particle sizes. From our results, we can conclude that comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) corroborates rather indefinite traditional classification of poalrimetric classes of comets, and provides good opportunity to study less processed material which probably cherishes its memory at the formation epoch of the Solar System.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.44 no.4
• /
• pp.135-142
• /
• 2011

A $200'{\times}200'$ region around 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is observed and analyzed in the near-infrared. We obtain polarimetry data in the J, H, and Ks bands using the SIRIUS polarimeter SIRPOL at the Infrared Survey Facility 1.4 m telescope. We measure the Stokes parameters of 2562 point-like sources to derive the degree of polarization and the polarization position angles. We discuss the statistics of the groups classified by color-magnitude diagram and proper motions of the sources, in order to separate the Galactic foreground sources from those present in the LMC. We notice that groups classified by the proper motion data show a tendency towards different polarimetric properties.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.67.1-67.1
• /
• 2016

We observed two star forming regions, N159 and N160, in the Large Magellanic Cloud with SIRPOL, the polarimeter of the Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF) in South Africa. The photometric and polarimetric observations are done in three near-infrared bands, J, H, and Ks. We measured Stokes parameters of point sources and calculated their degrees of polarization and polarization angles. The polarization vector map shows complex features associated with dust and gas structures. Overall features of the magnetic field in N159 and N160 regions are different from each other and appear to be related to local environments, such as interior and boundary of shell structure, existence of star-forming HII regions, and boundaries between HII regions and dense dark clouds. We discuss the relation between the structure of magnetic field and the local properties of dust and gas in N159 and N160 regions by comparing our polarization vector map with images of $H{\alpha}$, mid-infrared, and $^{12}CO$ emissions, respectively by WFI of MPG/ESO telescope, Spitzer IRAC, and NANTEN.