On the correlation between GNSS-R reflectivity and L-band microwave radiometry

Abstract

This work compares microwave radiometry and global navigation satellite systems-reflectometry (GNSS-R) observations using data gathered from airborne flights conducted for three different soil moisture conditions. Two different regions are analyzed, a crops region and a grassland region. For the crops region, the correlation with the I/2 (first Stokes parameter divided by two) was between 0.74 and 0.8 for large incidence angle reflectivity data (30°-50°), while it was between 0.51 and 0.61 for the grassland region and the same incidence angle conditions. For the crops region, the correlation with the I/2 was between 0.64 and 0.69 for lower incidence angle reflectivity data (<;30°), while it was between 0.41 and 0.6 for the grassland region. This indicates that for large incidence angles the coherent scattering mechanism is dominant, while the lower incidence angles are more affected by incoherent scattering. Also a relationship between the reflectivity and the polarization index (PI) is observed. The PI has been used to remove surface roughness effects, but due to its dependence on the incidence angle only the large incidence angle observations were useful. The difference in ground resolution between microwave radiometry and GNSS-R and their strong correlation suggests that they might be combined to improve the spatial resolution of microwave radiometry measurements in terms of brightness temperature and consequently soil moisture retrievals.