Ground Based Bistatic Scatterometer Measurement for the Estimation of Growth Variables of Ladyfinger Crop at X-Band

The present study describes the ground based bistatic scatterometer measurements of ladyfinger crop at its various growth stages in the specular direction with the azimuthal angle (\( \phi = 0 \)) for the angular incidence angle ranging from 20° to 60° at the interval of 10° at HH and VV polarization. An outdoor ladyfinger crop bed of an area 4 × 4 m2 was specially prepared for the ground based bistatic scatterometer measurements. The crop growth variables like vegetation water content, leaf area index, fresh biomass, and plant height were also measured at the time of each bistatic scatterometer measurement. The specular bistatic scattering coefficients were found to be decreasing with the crop growth variables up to the maturity stage and then after it increased slightly. The linear regression analysis was carried out between specular bistatic scattering coefficient and crop growth variables at all the incidence angles for HH and VV polarization to select the optimum angle of incidence and polarization for the estimation of crop growth variables. The potential of subtractive clustering based adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system was applied for the estimation of crop growth variables. The estimated values for different crop growth variables were found almost close to the observed values.