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Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Engineering Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 23032

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Pasquale Imperatore

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Guest Editor

National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), Naples, Italy
Interests: SAR processing; SAR interferometry; SAR calibration; SAR modeling; electromagnetic scattering; random layered media; parallel algorithms; high performance computing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Joel T. Johnson

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2015 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Interests: active microwave remote sensing, passive microwave remote sensing, microwave radiometry, electromagnetic theory, scattering from rough surfaces
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Dr. Francesco Soldovieri

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Guest Editor

National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), Via Diocleziano 328, 80124 Naples, Italy
Interests: electromagnetic scattering; radar imaging; ground penetrating radar; data integration; non-invasive monitoring tools
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Daniele Riccio

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Guest Editor

Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering, University of Napoli Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Napoli, Italy
Interests: remote sensing; electromagnetic scattering; synthetic aperture radar; radar; microwave imaging
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microwave remote sensing offers a unique capability for monitoring the natural processes and available resources on our Planet, on both local and global scales. Notwithstanding the considerable progress made in the development of different classes of microwave sensors and the rich multidimensional information they can provide, the full interpretation and exploitation of the empirical data remains a challenging task. Finding a quantitative relation between the observables and the natural parameters is a key-problem in remote sensing, thus it has attracted much attention during last decades. Accordingly, electromagnetic modelling has a profound influence on the design of remote sensing applications, thus still posing challenging problems with theoretical, computational, and experimental relevance. Conversely, the way in which the knowledge about fundamental physics of the interaction between radiation and geo/bio-physical media is encoded, at a certain level of abstraction, by electromagnetic models has implications of deep semantic, ontological, and epistemological nature.

This special issue aims at highlighting recent progress in electromagnetic modelling and its application to microwave remote sensing, with relevance for geoscience and environmental investigations. We solicit contributions describing innovative formulations, model simulations, and application-oriented strategies for experimental data interpretation and geoscientific parameters retrieval. We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

Electromagnetic Scattering and Emission Theory
Forward Electromagnetic Models
Models of Discrete Random Media, Randomly Rough Surfaces, Inhomogeneous Random Media, and Random Layered Structures
Electromagnetic Modeling of the Sea, Land, Atmosphere, and Cryosphere
Microwave Inverse Problems and Retrieval Approaches
Computational Methods for electromagnetic scattering and emission simulation
Models and Applications for Microwave Imaging and Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR)
Microwave Radiometry and Interference Mitigation
Near Range Radar in complex electromagnetic scenarios (e.g., Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Subsurface Imaging, Through-wall imaging)
Geo- and bio-physical parameter retrieval in operational and emerging microwave remote sensing applications.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) for microwave inverse problems
In-situ data analysis and Ground Validation

Dr. Pasquale Imperatore
Prof. Joel T. Johnson
Dr. Francesco Soldovieri
Prof. Daniele Riccio
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Electromagnetic Wave Theory
Scattering and Emission
Electromagnetic Models
Inverse Problems
Microwave and Radar Imaging
Computational Electromagnetics
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
Microwave Radiometry
Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

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27 pages, 22251 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Asymptotic Modeling of Three-Dimensional Radar Backscattering from Oil Slicks on Sea Surfaces

by Nicolas Pinel, Christophe Bourlier, Irina Sergievskaya, Nicolas Longépé and Guillaume Hajduch

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(4), 981; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14040981 - 17 Feb 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1647

Abstract

This paper presents new results of a simulation of radar backscatter from oil slick areas on a real three-dimensional sea surface, based on a physical hydrodynamic model of surface wave damping in the presence of oil films, the local equilibrium model (MLB). To solve this problem, the modelling was carried out by using the first-order small-slope approximation (SSA1) model. It presents the advantage of having a very good compromise between rapidity and accuracy of the calculation. The choice of the model is justified by solving the two-dimensional problem with several asymptotic methods and further comparing the results with a rigorous numerical method, based on the Method of Moments (MoM). Two approaches called “thin-layer” (TL) and “classical” were used to deal with the double layer (air/oil/sea) problem. The TL approach assumes that this double-layer problem can be seen locally as a Fabry–Pérot interferometer, which implies that the Kirchhoff-tangent plane approximation (KA) is valid. The classical approach consists in neglecting the presence of the oil layer for dealing with electromagnetic backscattering, which is valid for very thin oil films compared to the electromagnetic (EM) wavelength. It is shown that these two approaches have rather complementary validity domains: The TL approach is always valid for small observation angles, which makes it suitable for near nadir sensors such as altimeters, whereas the classical approach is valid for moderate observation angles, which makes it suitable for most satellite applications. The 3D modelling results are compared with C-band and X-band measured data (CSK experiment and OOW NOFO experiment) in VV polarization. The calculation takes into account that the oil film on the sea surface is mainly in an emulsion state. The results highlighted the relevance of the MLB hydrodynamic model, as well as the SSA1 EM model combined wit the classical approach, for quantifying NRCS in seas contaminated with marine oil or surfactants. The agreement is indeed very good in the X-band range. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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26 pages, 10631 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simulation and Analysis of Electromagnetic Scattering from Anisotropic Plasma-Coated Electrically Large and Complex Targets

by Zhenmin Rao, Guoqiang Zhu, Siyuan He, Chao Li, Zewang Yang and Jian Liu

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(3), 764; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030764 - 07 Feb 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1824

Abstract

An efficient physical optics (PO) calculation method is proposed for the electromagnetic (EM) scattering of electrically large targets coated with magnetized plasma characterized by asymmetric tensor dielectric parameters. The outer surface of the arbitrarily shaped target is discretized into triangular elements. According to the principle of tangent plane approximation and by using the plane wave spectrum expansion method, the scattered field from one triangular element is derived as a double integral in the spectral domain. To obtain the solution in the spatial domain, the saddle point method is used to asymptotically calculate the integral. Then, the equivalent surface currents (ESCs) are constructed by calculating the surface field at the outer surface of the planar model, from which the PO solution is derived by using the Stratton–Chu integral. Moreover, to interpret the field propagation process in the plasma layer quantitatively, the total scattered field of the coated planar model is decomposed into the superposition of different mode field components. It is observed that the scattered fields demonstrate an inherent cross-polarization phenomenon due to the nonreciprocal constitutive relation of the plasma, which is a distinct feature and is different from the general anisotropic medium whose dielectric parameters can be diagonalized. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by numerical results. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm consumes less calculation time and memory as compared to commercial full solvers. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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20 pages, 27520 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Model Dimensionality in Linear Inverse Scattering from Dielectric Objects

by Gianluca Gennarelli, Giovanni Ludeno, Noviello Carlo, Ilaria Catapano and Francesco Soldovieri

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(1), 222; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14010222 - 04 Jan 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1726

Abstract

This paper deals with 3D and 2D linear inverse scattering approaches based on the Born approximation, and investigates how the model dimensionality influences the imaging performance. The analysis involves dielectric objects hosted in a homogenous and isotropic medium and a multimonostatic/multifrequency measurement configuration. A theoretical study of the spatial resolution is carried out by exploiting the singular value decomposition of 3D and 2D scattering operators. Reconstruction results obtained from synthetic data generated by using a 3D full-wave electromagnetic simulator are reported to support the conclusions drawn from the analysis of resolution limits. The presented analysis corroborates that 3D and 2D inversion approaches have almost identical imaging performance, unless data are severely corrupted by the noise. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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24 pages, 14020 KiB

Open AccessArticle

SAR Imaging Distortions Induced by Topography: A Compact Analytical Formulation for Radiometric Calibration

by Pasquale Imperatore

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(16), 3318; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13163318 - 22 Aug 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2441

Abstract

Modeling of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging distortions induced by topography is addressed and a novel radiometric calibration method is proposed in this paper. An analytical formulation of the problem is primarily provided in purely geometrical terms, by adopting the theoretical notions of the differential geometry of surfaces. The novel and conceptually simple formulation relies on a cylindrical coordinate system, whose longitudinal axis corresponds to the sensor flight direction. A 3D representation of the terrain shape is then incorporated into the SAR imaging model by resorting to a suitable parametrization of the observed ground surface. Within this analytical framework, the area-stretching function quantitatively expresses in geometrical terms the inherent local radiometric distortions. This paper establishes its analytical expression in terms of the magnitude of the gradient of the look-angle function uniquely defined in the image domain, thus resulting in being mathematically concise and amenable to a straightforward implementation. The practical relevance of the formulation is also illustrated from a computational perspective, by elucidating its effective discrete implementation. In particular, an inverse cylindrical mapping approach is adopted, thus avoiding the drawback of pixel area fragmentation and integration required in forward-mapping-based approaches. The effectiveness of the proposed SAR radiometric calibration method is experimentally demonstrated by using COSMO-SkyMed SAR data acquired over a mountainous area in Italy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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18 pages, 4031 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Full-Wave Modeling and Inversion of UWB Radar Data for Wave Propagation in Cylindrical Objects

by Lan Gao, Chiara Dachena, Kaijun Wu, Alessandro Fedeli, Matteo Pastorino, Andrea Randazzo, Xiaoping Wu and Sébastien Lambot

Remote Sens. 2021, 13(12), 2370; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13122370 - 17 Jun 2021

Viewed by 2084

Abstract

The nondestructive characterization of cylindrical objects is needed in many fields, such as medical diagnostics, tree trunk inspection, or concrete column testing. In this study, the radar equation of Lambot et al. is combined with cylindrical Green’s functions to fully model and invert ultra-wideband (UWB) ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data and retrieve the properties of cylindrical objects. Inversion is carried out using a lookup table (LUT) approach followed by local optimization to ensure retrieval of the global minimum of the objective function. Numerical experiments were conducted to analyze the capabilities of the developed inversion procedure to estimate the radius, permittivity, and conductivity of the cylinders. The full-wave model was validated in laboratory conditions on metallic and plastic pipes of different sizes. The adopted radar system consists of a lightweight vector network analyzer (VNA) connected to a single transmitting and receiving horn antenna. The numerical experiments highlighted the complexity of the inverse problem, mainly originating from the multiple propagation modes within cylindrical objects. The laboratory measurements demonstrated the accuracy of the forward modeling and reconstructions in far-field conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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25 pages, 4058 KiB

Open AccessArticle

SCoBi Multilayer: A Signals of Opportunity Reflectometry Model for Multilayer Dielectric Reflections

by Dylan Boyd, Mehmet Kurum, Orhan Eroglu, Ali Cafer Gurbuz, James L. Garrison, Benjamin R. Nold, Manuel A. Vega, Jeffrey R. Piepmeier and Rajat Bindlish

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(21), 3480; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213480 - 23 Oct 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2438

Abstract

A multilayer module is incorporated into the Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) Coherent Bistatic Scattering model (SCoBi) for determining the reflections and propagation of electric fields within a series of multilayer dielectric slabs. This module can be used in conjunction with other SCoBi components to simulate complex, bistatic simulation schemes that include features such as surface roughness, vegetation, antenna effects, and multilayer soil moisture interactions on reflected signals. This paper introduces the physics underlying the multilayer module and utilizes it to perform a simulation study of the response of SoOp-R measurements with respect to subsurface soil moisture parameters. For a frequency range of 100–2400 MHz, it is seen that the SoOp-R response to a single dielectric slab is mostly frequency insensitive; however, the SoOp-R response to multilayer dielectric slabs will vary between frequencies. The relationship between SoOp-R reflectivity and the contributing depth is visualized, and the results show that SoOp-R measurements can display sensitivity to soil moisture below the penetration depth. By simulation of simple soil moisture profiles with different wetting and drying gradients, the dielectric contrast between layers is shown to be the greatest contributing factor to subsurface soil moisture sensitivity. Overall, it is observed that different frequencies can sense different areas of a soil moisture profile, and this behavior can enable subsurface soil moisture data products from SoOp-R observations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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16 pages, 11401 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mapping and Assessment of Tree Roots Using Ground Penetrating Radar with Low-Cost GPS

by Lilong Zou, Yan Wang, Iraklis Giannakis, Fabio Tosti, Amir M. Alani and Motoyuki Sato

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(8), 1300; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12081300 - 20 Apr 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4497

Abstract

In this paper, we have presented a methodology combining ground penetrating radar (GPR) and a low-cost GPS receiver for three-dimensional detection of tree roots. This research aims to provide an effective and affordable testing tool to assess the root system of a number of trees. For this purpose, a low-cost GPS receiver was used, which recorded the approximate position of each GPR track, collected with a 500 MHz RAMAC shielded antenna. A dedicated post-processing methodology based on the precise position of the satellite data, satellite clock offsets data, and a local reference Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Earth Observation Network System (GEONET) Station close to the survey site was developed. Firstly, the positioning information of local GEONET stations was used to filter out the errors caused by satellite position error, satellite clock offset, and ionosphere. In addition, the advanced Kalman filter was designed to minimise receiver offset and the multipath error, in order to obtain a high precision position of each GPR track. Kirchhoff migration considering near-field effect was used to identify the three-dimensional distribution of the root. In a later stage, a novel processing scheme was used to detect and clearly map the coarse roots of the investigated tree. A successful case study is proposed, which supports the following premise: the current scheme is an affordable and accurate mapping method of the root system architecture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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19 pages, 5801 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Modified Model for Electromagnetic Scattering of Sea Surface Covered with Crest Foam and Static Foam

by Dongfang Li, Zhiqin Zhao, Yanwen Zhao, Yuan Huang and Zaiping Nie

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(5), 788; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12050788 - 01 Mar 2020

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2655

Abstract

With the increase of sea surface wind speed, whitecaps will appear on the sea surface. Generally, for Electromagnetic (EM) scattering of the foam-covered sea surface, medium-scale waves are used to replace the breaking waves of the real sea surface. Another treatment in computation is to adopt one of the whitecap coverages and fixed foam layer thickness. In fact, the evolution process of a breaking wave goes through two stages: stage A (crest foam) and stage B (static foam). In this paper, a geometric model of the sea surface covered with crest foam and static foam is established. The coverage ratio of stage A and stage B is proposed for the first time for a given sea state. In addition, different foam layer thickness distributions in each foam for various wind speeds are also considered. Based on the facet scattering theory of sea surface, this paper adopts the modified facet-based scattering model to deal with the scattering contribution of the sea surface and the effect of foam. Finally, in order to verify the accuracy of the geometric modeling and the scattering model of the sea surface, the EM backscattering of sea surface under different sea states are calculated. Simulation results show that the results of the proposed model are more consistent with the measured data than the results of the sea surface covered with individual crest foam or the sea surface covered with individual static foam. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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15 pages, 3125 KiB

Open AccessTechnical Note

Link Budget Analysis for GNSS-R Sea Surface Return in Arbitrary Acquisition Geometries Using BA-PTSM

by Gerardo Di Martino, Alessio Di Simone, Antonio Iodice and Daniele Riccio

Remote Sens. 2022, 14(3), 520; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14030520 - 22 Jan 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1716

Abstract

In this article, we present a link budget analysis for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals scattered off the sea surface in arbitrary acquisition geometries. The aim of our study is to investigate the reliability of the Geometrical Optics (GO) scattering model, which accurately describes sea surface scattering at and near the specular reflection direction, in properly modeling the sea surface return in far-from-specular acquisition geometries, which are of interest for maritime surveillance purposes and where GO is expected to fail. To this end, we adopted the recent Bistatic Anisotropic Polarimetric Two-Scale Model (BA-PTSM), which revealed good agreement with advanced scattering models, such as the second-order Small Slope Approximation (SSA2), regardless of the acquisition geometry, with the advantage of a reduced computational complexity. Numerical results have been derived for both circular polarization channels and for both spaceborne and airborne GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R). It has been shown that, as long as conventional GNSS-R processing is assumed, GO can be safely adopted for simulation and analysis of spaceborne GNSS-R data regardless of the acquisition geometry and sea state, whereas more accurate scattering models, e.g., BA-PTSM, should be used for airborne receivers in far-from-specular configurations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electromagnetic Modeling in Microwave Remote Sensing)

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