A modified IEM model for: scattering from soil surfaces with application to soil moisture sensing

The IEM surface scattering model is generalized to include the possible existence of a dielectric profile such as observed in drying conditions after rain. It is shown that for such a case, the generalized signal model including this improvement in reflectivity may give better agreement with backscatter measurements for some data sets. Hence, such a model may be applied either directly for estimating soil moisture or used to generate training patterns for statistical estimators.