Polarimetric Two-Scale Model for Soil Moisture Estimation from Hybrid Compact Polarimetry SAR Data

Hybrid compact polarimetric (CP) SAR systems present significant advantages with respect to fully polarimetric (FP) ones, in terms of hardware simplification and better attainable resolution and coverage. Retrieval of soil moisture is a classical application of FP SAR data: in this context, advanced model-based techniques have been proposed to support microwave data inversion. In this paper, we present a new approach for soil moisture retrieval from CP data, based on the use of the Polarimetric Two-Scale Model (PTSM), which has been originally proposed in support of soil moisture retrieval from FP data. Obtained results are validated using simulated CP data relevant to the AgriSAR campaign test sites and compared with FP PTSM-based retrieval results.