Patent ID: 8606520

Claim:
A system of measuring a volumetric soil water content, the system comprising: a non-polarizing reflectivity calculating unit that determines reflectivity R of a soil area using information measured by a measuring sensor of a satellite; a roughness calculating unit that corrects the reflectivity R using a calculated roughness to determine a corrected reflectivity; a dielectric constant determining unit that determines a dielectric constant from the corrected reflectivity; and a soil water measuring unit that estimates a volumetric soil water content from the dielectric constant; wherein reflectivity of a rough surface (R R ), which is obtained by using the reflectivity R, is converted into specular reflectivity (R s ) using Equation 6: R R , V , H = R S , V , H × exp [ - ( 4 ⁢ πσcos ⁢ ⁢ θ λ ) 2 ] , [ Equation ⁢ ⁢ 6 ] wherein S is specular reflection, V is vertical polarization, H is horizontal polarization, and θ is a satellite zenithal angle, and wherein the roughness (σ) is calculated by applying reflectivity of the rough surface (R R ) into Equation 5: σ ≈ λ 4 ⁢ ⁢ π ⁢ ⁢ cos ⁢ ⁢ θ · ln ⁡ ( R R , V cos 2 ⁢ θ R R , H ) , [ Equation ⁢ ⁢ 5 ] wherein λ is a wavelength of the measurement channel, θ is a satellite zenithal angle, R v is a vertical reflectivity, and R H is a horizontal reflectivity.