Cramer–Rao Lower Bound for SoOp-R-Based Root-Zone Soil Moisture Remote Sensing

Autor: Dylan Ray Boyd, Ali Cafer Gurbuz, Mehmet Kurum, James L. Garrison, Benjamin R. Nold, Jeffrey R. Piepmeier, Manuel Vega, Rajat Bindlish
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Vol 13, Pp 6101-6114 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2151-1535
DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2020.3029158
Popis: Signals of opportunity (SoOp) reflectometry (SoOp-R) is a maturing field for geophysical remote sensing as evidenced by the growing number of airborne and spaceborne experiments. As this approach receives more attention, it is worth analyzing SoOp-R's capabilities to retrieve subsurface soil moisture (SM) by leveraging communication and navigation satellite transmitters. In this research, the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is used to identify the effects of variable SoOp-R parameters on the best achievable estimation error for root-zone soil moisture (RZSM). This study investigates the use of multiple frequency, polarization, and incidence angle measurement configurations on a two-layered dielectric profile. The results also detail the effects of variable SM conditions on the capability of SoOp-R systems to predict subsurface SM. The most prevalent observation is the importance of using at least two frequencies to limit uncertainties from subsurface SM estimates. If at least two frequencies are used, the CRLB of a profile is retrievable within the root-zone depending on the surface SM content as well as the number of independent measurements of the profile. For a depth of 30 cm, it is observed that a CRLB corresponding to 4% RZSM estimation accuracy is achievable with as few as two dual-frequency-based SoOp-R measurements. For this depth, increasing number of measurements provided by polarization and incidence angle allow for sensing of increasingly wet SM profile structures. This study, overall, details a methodology by which SoOp-R receiver system can be designed to achieve a desired CRLB using a tradeoff study between the available measurements and SM profile.
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