Reflectivity, Emissivity, and Brightness from Multilayered Soil with Linearly Varying Permittivity at P- and L- bands
Passive sensing of root zone soil moisture is theoretically investigated using P and L band frequencies. The soil is considered to be a stratified medium. The reflectivity from the soil surface is found by considering the soil to be composed of a finely layered structure with layer widths that are small compared to a wavelength. A well-known transmission line algorithm is then used to compute the reflectivity at the surface. Emissivity is obtained as (1 – reflectivity). It assumed that the soil is at a constant temperature of 300o K when determining the brightness temperature. A soil moisture profile consisting of two homogeneous layers separated by a layer of linearly varying soil moisture is investigated. The study is made at an incident angle of 40O for horizontal polarization at 0.8 and 1.4 GHz. Two variations of the basic profile are considered: a transition from a layer of lesser moisture to a layer of greater moisture and the opposite. In both cases the P band signal shows greater penetration than the L band case. There is greater penetration in the transition to drier soils. In both cases the L band signals show sensitivity to only the upper surface of the soil as expected.