CHINESE JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICS Vol.50, No.

2, 2007, pp: 533∼538

ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING CHARACTERISTICS

OF VEGETATION IN A HALF-SPACE MODEL

YANG Tong-Min XIE Yong-Jun WANG Peng YANG Rui

National Key Laboratory of Antennas and Microwave Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China

Abstract Electromagnetic scattering characteristics of ground vegetation in a half-space model are studied.
Instead of free-space Green’s functions used in previous literatures, half-space Green’s functions are applied here
to solve the scattering fields of a single scatterer. Monte-Carlo method is employed to build the vegetation over
the ground in order to obtain the electromagnetic scattering characteristics of the ground vegetation. Finally,
backscattering and bistatic Radar cross sections of the vegetation canopy are calculated. Comparing with the
scattering fields obtained by free-space Green’s functions, the scattering fields obtained by half-space Green’s
functions are more suitable to describe the electromagnetic scattering characteristics of the ground vegetation.

Key words Half-space Green’s functions, Monte-Carlo method, Scattering from vegetation, Random media,
Radar cross section

1 INTRODUCTION
With the development of remote sensing technology in recent years, there are lots of work to do to obtain
the scattering characteristics of the remote sensing objects and their background surroundings accurately[1∼6] .
And it is very significant to study the scattering characteristics of vegetation in the fields of communication
in forest, target identification, environment monitoring and so on. Scattering from a vegetation canopy has
been studied using the scattering amplitude tensor F derived from free space Green’s functions[7∼10] and plane
wave reflectance of the ground was considered in order to get the half-space scattering characteristics of the
vegetation. However, the scattering fields of the vegetation are near field at the ground which can not be
considered as a plane wave. Therefore, it is not appropriate to calculate the secondary scattering fields from the
ground using plane wave reflectance. In fact, the scattering fields in half-space may be easily found for a given
set of radiant current sources, if the half-space dyadic Green’s functions of the environments are available.
In this paper, half-space Green’s functions are employed to the computation of scattering fields from the
vegetation canopy which consists of randomly distributed and oriented dielectric scatters with the shape and
dielectric constant similar to the vegetation components. Circular disk, with the characteristic of one or two
dimensions smaller compared with the wavelength of incidence field is used to model the leaf which constitutes
the major part of the canopy. General Rayleigh-Gans approximation (GRG) is used to calculate the current
in a disk shaped scatterer, and Monte-Carlo method is applied to simulate the model of the vegetation canopy
which consists of leaves with different orientations, poses and sizes. Using a coordinate transformation, we can
obtain the electromagnetic scattering fields of every leaf in the vegetation canopy. The reflected style of the
ground can be expressed in Fig. 1. On the side, when we calculate the electrical current in the leaf, we take into
account not only the current produced by the direct in-
cident wave but also the current produced by the wave
reflected by the ground (Fig. 2).
Finally, in order to obtain the scattering charac-
teristics of a single leaf under the new scattering model,
radar cross sections are calculated in half-space and
compared with that got in free space. The results show Fig. 1 Types of the ground reflection

E-mail: ytmyezi@yahoo.com.cn
534 Chinese J. Geophys. Vol.50, No.2

that the radar cross sections calculated using half-space

Fig. 2 Geometry of the scattering problem
Green’s functions are greater than that calculated us-
ing free space Green’s functions. Because of the reflec-
tion of the ground the amplitude of backscattering co-
efficients twitter obviously. The primary reason for this
is the phasic discrepancy caused by different distance
of the wave from the ground or from the scatterers. In
order to obtain more information of the scatterers and
their environment, it is the best and simplest method
to calculate scattering fields using half-space Green’s
functions. This situation is useful in many radar appli-
cations where the effect of the environment can not be
neglected, especially in the radar remote sensing and
monitoring for vegetation.

2 THE SCATTERING FIELD OF A SINGLE LEAF

For a scatterer with an axis of symmetry aligned with z axis and one or two of its dimensions smaller
compared with the wavelength of the incidence fields, that is to say, kD[(εr )1/2 − 1]  1, where D is the smallest
dimension.
Using general Rayleigh-Gans approximation we can estimate the field inside the scatterer E in (r 0 )[9] .

¯ · E inc ,
E in (r 0 ) = ā (1)

¯ is the polarization tensor[11] defined as

where ā

¯ = aT Ī¯ + (aN − aT )ẑẑ,

ā (2)

with
1
aT = , (3)
(εr − 1)gT + 1
1
aN = , (4)
(εr − 1)gN + 1

where Ī¯ is unit tensor; ẑ is unit vector of the axis z; εr is the relative permittivity of the leaf; gT and gN are
the demagnetizing factors. For a scatterer with 2w in thickness and a in radius we can write the demagnetizing
factors as
" √ ! #
1 m2 m2 − 1
gT = √ arcsin −1 ,
2(m2 − 1) m2 − 1 m
" √ !#
m2 m2 m2 − 1
gN = 2 1− √ arcsin ,
m −1 m2 − 1 m
a
m= . (5)
w
Consider a plane wave
ˆ
E i (r) = q̂E0 e−jk0 i·r , (6)
where, E0 is the amplitude of the incident wave; k0 is the background medium wave number; î is the incident
direction; q̂ = v̂ i , ĥi are the vertical polarization unit vector and horizontal polarization unit vector and defined
as[7]
 Yang T M et al.: Electromagnetic Scattering Characteristics of Vegetation in a Half-Space Model 535

î = sin(x̂ cos ϕi + ŷ sin ϕi ) − ẑ cos θi ,

ẑ × î
ĥi = = ŷ cos ϕi − x̂ sin ϕi ,
|ẑ × î|
v̂ i =ĥi × î = − cos θi (x̂ cos ϕi + ŷ sin ϕi ) − ẑ sin θi , (7)

where, î is the unit vector of the incident direction; θi and ϕi are the incident angles (Fig. 2).
Under the illumination of a plane wave, the far zone scattering fields of the dielectric scatterers can be
expressed as
ZZZ ZZZ
j ∂ ∂ ∂
E s (r) = jω G¯A · J (r 0 )dr 0 − ∇ Geq
x J (r 0 ) + Geq
y J (r 0 ) + Geq
z J (r 0 )dr 0 , (8)
v ω v ∂x ∂y ∂z
with

J (r 0 ) = − jωε0 (εr − 1)E in (r 0 ), (9)

¯ =(x̂x̂ + ŷ ŷ)Gxx + ẑ x̂Gzx + ẑ ŷGzy + ẑẑGzz ,
Ḡ (10)
A A A A A

zy
where Gxx zx zz
A , GA , GA and GA denote the spatial domain half-space Green’s functions for the vector potentials;
Geq eq eq
x , Gy and Gz denote the spatial domain half-space Green’s functions for the scalar potentials
[12,13]
; εr is
the relative permittivity of the leaf.
Suppose the incident wave only has TE component. Then the scattering fields can be written as follows
¯ = (x̂x̂ + ŷ ŷ)Gxx + ẑ x̂Gzx + ẑ ŷGzy ,
Ḡ (11)
A A A A

where ZZZ ZZZ  

E s (r) = jω ¯ · J (r 0 )dr 0 − j ∇
Ḡ Geq
∂
J (r 0
) + G eq ∂
J (r 0
) dr 0 . (12)
A x y
v ω v ∂x ∂y
Now the total excitation fields E inc (r) can be written as
ˆ
E inc (r) = ĥi E0 (e−jki·r + RTE e−jkx x−jky y · ejkz (z−2h) ), (13)
k2z − k1z
where RTE = is the reflectance of the ground; h is the height of the leaf above ground; k1z , k2z are
k1z + k2z
the wave numbers of the soil and atmosphere in z direction respectively. By substituting Eq.(13) into (1), we
can obtain the field in the scatterer.
ˆ 0
E in (r 0 ) =[aT x̂x̂ + aT ŷ ŷ + (aN − aT )ẑẑ] · ĥi E0 (e−jki·r + RTE e−jkx x −jky y · ejkz (z −2h) )
0 0 0

ˆ 0
=(ŷaT cos ϕi − x̂aT sin ϕi )E0 (e−jki·r + RTE e−jkx x −jky y · ejkz (z −2h) ).
0 0 0
(14)

Then, by replacing θi and ϕi with π − θs and ϕs respectively, we can obtain the polarization vectors of the
backscattering fields.

ĥs =ŷ cos ϕs − x̂ sin ϕs ,

v̂ s = cos θs (x̂ cos ϕs + ŷ sin ϕs ) − ẑ sin θs . (15)

Substitute Eq.(9), (10), (14) into (12) and multiplying ĥs , we can obtain the horizontal component of the
scattering fields.
ω 2 ε0 µ0 e−jk0 r
ZZZ
1 ˆ 0
EHH =ĥs · E s v0 (εr − 1)aT cos(ϕi − ϕs )E0 [u(ŝ, î) + Ie−jk0 i·r dr 0
4π r v0 v
0 !
ZZZ −jk0 (r−ŝ·r )
1 e 0 0 0
+ RTE + I e−jkx x −jky y · ejkz (z −2h) dr 0 ], (16)
v0 v r
536 Chinese J. Geophys. Vol.50, No.2

where
ZZZ
1 ˆ 0
u(ŝ, î) = e−jk0 (i−ŝ)·r dr 0 , (17)
v0 v
  Z +∞
−j kρ (2)
I= H0 (kρ ρ)Aeh e−jkz z dkρ ,
2 −∞ kz
0
Aeh =RTE e−jkz z , (18)

where, H02 (·) is Hankel function of the second kind; Aeh is the reflectance coefficient of the ground; v0 is the
volume of the scatterer.

3 THE SCATTERING FIELDS OF THE VEGETATION

Consider a canopy containing randomly oriented dielectric scatterers of arbitrary shape (Fig. 3) above the
surface with relative permittivity εr , and the relative permittivity of the soil is ε1 . By describing the local frame
with the Eulerian angles α, β, γ, we can transfer the scattering fields in the reference to that in the local frame
and write the explicit form as[14] (Fig. 4)

x̂0 = cos β cos αx̂ + cos β sin αŷ − sin β ẑ,

ŷ 0 =(cos α sin β sin γ − sin α cos γ)x̂ + (cos α cos γ + sin α sin β sin γ)ŷ + cos β sin γ ẑ,
ẑ 0 =(sin α sin γ + cos α sin β cos γ)x̂ + (sin α sin β cos γ − cos α sin γ)ŷ + cos β cos γ ẑ.

Fig. 3 Geometric structure of the vegetation model Fig. 4 Euler angle of orientation

Considering the random distribution of the leaf and independent probability of α, β, γ, we assume the form
of the probability distribution function as
( 1
, φ1 < φ2
p(φ) = φ2 − φ1
0, otherwise
where, φ = α, β, γ and φ1 = 0, φ2 = 2π.
In order to characterize the attenuation of the wave propagating in the canopy accurately, we can get the
effective propagation constant from Ref.[6].

4 NUMERICAL RESULTS
This section presents numerical results generated using the expressions of the previous sections and provides
an illustration of the radar cross sections for the disk-shaped objects. And comparisons are made with the
 Yang T M et al.: Electromagnetic Scattering Characteristics of Vegetation in a Half-Space Model 537

results presented in Ref.[9] in which the radar cross

sections were calculated using free space Green’s func-
tions. Fig. 5 illustrates the backscattering cross sec-
tions plotted versus the incidence angles at the fre-
quency f = 9.6GHz, and the leaf illuminated by a plane
wave is 5cm in semidiameter and 0.5mm in thickness.
The relative dielectric constants of the soil and the leaf
are ε1 = 12 − j1 and εr = 28.04 − j12.5 respectively.
From Fig. 5 we can see that the envelope of the
backscattering coefficients twitter rapidly in half-space
and the mean intensity of the scattering coefficients is
several dB higher than that obtained in free space. The
main reason for this is the amplitudes and phases of Fig. 5 Backscattering cross sections of a leaf
different scattering fields are different at a point in space. The scattering fields are enhanced at some points
however they are subdued at other points.
In order to obtain the scattering fields of the vegetation canopy, we use Monte-Carlo method to simulate
the model for the vegetation canopy. First, we generate the uniformly distributed random number α, β, γ with
computer. For the simulation we choose one combination of α, β, γ discretionarily to describe the pose of the leaf
in the vegetation. Then we generate N random numbers uniformly distributed in the volume V to represent the
position of the leaf in the vegetation. In this study, the area of the illuminated vegetation canopy is S=5m×5m
and the volume of vegetation canopy is V = S × d (Fig. 3), where, d is the thickness of the vegetation, H is the
height above the ground.
The variations of the scattering cross sections from the vegetation with leaf density n = 2800m−3 gotten
by free-space Green’s functions and half-space Green’s functions are shown in Figs. 6 and Fig. 7. It is illustrated
that both backscattering cross sections and bistatic scattering sections are greater in half-space. The reason
for this is the effect of the ground, which is related to the height H of the vegetation from ground and the the
relative permittivity ε1 . In this paper, we choose typical data ε1 = 12 − j1, H=5m.

Fig. 6 Backscattering radar cross sections of the vegetation Fig. 7 Bistatic scattering radar sections of the vegetation

5 CONCLUSION
Since the scattering fields at the ground are near field, plane wave reflectance is not appropriate. In order to
calculate the scattering fields of the scatterers and their environments accurately, we analyze the electromagnetic
scattering characteristics of one leaf using half-space dyadic Green’s functions. Then we simulate the model for
the vegetation canopy using Monte-Carlo method, and get the scattering cross sections of the vegetation. The
 538 Chinese J. Geophys. Vol.50, No.2

results show that the radar cross sections calculated using half-space dyadic Green’s functions are bigger than
that calculated by using free-space Green’s functions. And the amplitudes of the scattering cross sections no
longer vary smoothly, instead, they fluctuate rapidly.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NECT-04-0950).

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