As a support of the Hydroterra Mission by ESA, this project consists on the characterization, improvement and calibration of a low power ground based Synthetic Aperture Radar being developed for continuous polarimetric radar measurements on controlled agricultural fields to assess several parameters of interest such as soil moisture and vegetation water content. In such scenario, calibration is required to scale properly the measurements in magnitude and phase in order to be able to interpret the data and build models to retrieve the necessary parameters. A radiometric analysis of the FMCW Radar is developed to build a model describing the field site parameters to validate and aid the calibration procedure. Different measurements have been carried out to collect the ground truth data of the field to study the interaction between the radar and the crop site, like air humidity, temperature, precipitation and pressure. Soil roughness have been characterized after sowing and several soil moisture sensors have been installed at different depths to provide continuous monitoring. Frequent vegetation sampling and processing are performed to obtain data on plant density, leaf area index, phenology stage, water cycle and water content. Two different crops are sown and monitored. In the spring phase, barley, a typical cereal cultivated in southern Europe. Immediately after, corn is monitored through its life cycle until harvesting. The different densities, sizes and water content of both crops will allow the project to assess the radar capabilities to provide soil moisture and crop water content data. The radar and ground truth observations provide results about diurnal water cycle showing water dynamic processes such as precipitation interception, surface soil moisture evolution in the events of rain, dew and evaporation to assess the radar continuous monitoring capabilities.

In the context of preparation of Hydroterra mission by ESA, continuous radar backscattering measurements are required to assess several parameters of interest such as soil moisture and vegetation water content. The project will consist on the characterization, improvement and calibration of a low power ground based synthetic aperture radar that is being developed for continuous polarimetric radar measurements on controlled agricultural fields.