Microwave scattering models for cylindrical vegetation components

This work is intended to investigate the accuracy of modelling simple cylindrical vegetation structures for microwave remote sensing applications. Plane wave scattering by dielectric cylinders of finite length and circular cross section is examined. Cylinders with a radius that varies linearly along the cylinder length - hereafter referred to as tapered cylinders - are also considered. Exact expressions for the scattering cross section do not exist for those objects. Numerical methods can provide accurate results, but they are computationally intensive and therefore less suitable when calculations on a large number of scatterers of different sizes and orientations are necessary. In this paper the scattering cross section of finite cylinders is computed by physical optics methods, which are faster and often employed in microwave vegetation models. Tapered cylinders are modelled by a number of coaxial finite cylinders stacked on top of each other. To check the validity of the results, the problems are also solved numerically by the moment method. For cases often encountered in vegetation studies, the results of the application of the approximate analytical methods are then compared with the corresponding numerical solution. For both constant-radius and tapered cylindrical structures, a good agreement with the numerical solution is found in the region of the main scattering lobe, which is the one of interest when considering complex media such as vegetation canopies. However, the accuracy of the approximate solutions decreases as the angle of the incident wave approaches the end-on angle.