Snowpack Monitoring Using a Dual-Receiver Radar Architecture

Pasian, Marco; Barbolini, Massimiliano; Dell’Acqua, Fabio; Espin-Lopez, P. F.; Silvestri, Lorenzo

doi:10.1109/tgrs.2018.2865180

Cited by 16 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…A dedicated field campaign was performed to experimentally assess the performance of the novel radar architecture. Indeed, even if the working principle was experimentally demonstrated in the previous works [16], an extensive field campaign is required to determine the precision and accuracy of the proposed radar architecture against different field conditions. For example, the flatness of the snow-ground interface, as schematically depicted in Fig.…”

Section: Experimental Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The details of the radar architecture are described in [16], but for the sake of completeness, the key points are summarized as follows. The general schema comprises one transmitting antenna “tx” and two receiving antennas, “rx1” and “rx2”, as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Radar Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To solve these limitations, a novel microwave radar architecture has been proposed recently, and the working principle is demonstrated experimentally [16]. One of the key points is the use of one transmitting antenna and two receiving antennas, in such a way that two independent radar profiles are collected, and used in a joint mathematical system to determine, at the same time, the snowpack depth and the wave speed into the snowpack.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While [16] is focused on the demonstration of the working principle, this paper presents the aspects related to the physical implementation of this novel radar architecture. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 13th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2019) [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Concerning the real part of the dielectric permittivity (for simplicity, dielectric constant), also in this case, for the manual snowpit analysis, this is a by-product, which is calculated using (1), once the bulk density is measured. Instead, as briefly summarized in "Radar architecture" section and reported in detail in [16], the radar measurements directly provide the snowpack depth and dielectric constant. Then, for the radar, the bulk density is a by-product, which is calculated using (1), once the dielectric constant is measured.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimental validation of a dual-receiver radar architecture for snowpack monitoring

Pasian

Espin-Lopez

Silvestri

et al. 2020

Int. J. Microw. Wireless Technol.

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Microwave radars can be used to monitor the internal structure of the snowpack, delivering real-time and non-destructive measurements. Recently, the working principle of an innovative radar architecture able to identify some of the most important snowpack parameters, without external aids, has been demonstrated. A key point of this new architecture is the use of two independent receiving antennas, and one transmitting antenna. This paper presents a comparison between two different implementations, either based on one physical antenna miming two receiving antennas, or based directly on two physical receiving antennas. The different advantages and disadvantages of both solutions are discussed, highlighting the superior accuracy achieved by the implementation based on two physical receiving antennas. Then, this paper also presents the field results achieved by this type of radar architecture, on the grounds of a 5-day experimental campaign that took place in winter 2019 in the Italian Alps on dry snow. The comparison between the radar measurements and the ground truth (manual snowpit analysis, in terms of snowpack depth, dielectric constant, bulk density, and snow water equivalent) is provided. Overall, a root mean square error of around 3.5 cm, 0.05, 27 kg/m3, and 2.5 cm is achieved, respectively.

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Section: Experimental Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Radar Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Experimental validation of a dual-receiver radar architecture for snowpack monitoring

Pasian

Espin-Lopez

Silvestri

et al. 2020

Int. J. Microw. Wireless Technol.

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Snow liquid water content measurement using an open-ended coaxial probe (OECP)

Mavrovic

Madore

Langlois

et al. 2020

Cold Regions Science and Technology

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Snow Layer Detection by Pattern Matching in a Multipath Radar Interference Scenario

Kulsoom

Dell’Acqua

Pasian

et al. 2021

International Journal of Remote Sensing

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Snowpack in sloped mountain terrain may present stratification in which layers of snow accumulate over a certain period. The loosely adhering layers in snowpack may exhibit a severe avalanche risk, and detecting such stratification phenomena is key to avalanche detection. The danger of manual, in-situ sampling calls for investigation of alternative approaches, including the use of in-situ radars. Considering a buried radar sensor, this manuscript analyses the impact of multipath phenomena on the results of the sensing operation. Multiple bounces in snow layers may degrade the received signal and corrupt the estimation results. Multipath phenomena are well known and analysed in communication systems, but snow layering measurement is a different problem, with little previous research done on related multipath phenomena. This paper analyses the problem with a multi-receiver radar architecture, investigating the impact of multi-path effects from layered snow on measurements carried out by a multi-static radar of Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) type. A few simplifying assumptions are formulated, in order to make the problem manageable, and a possible approach for solving the related issues is proposed, using a robust algorithm based on pattern matching to detect snow layering in such a challenging environment. Results obtained from various simulations carried out with realistic environmental and geometrical parameters appear to support the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show that with 3 metres of snow thickness, the probability of successfully detecting the correct numbers of layers exceeds 80%.

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Snowpack Monitoring Using a Dual-Receiver Radar Architecture

Cited by 16 publications

References 29 publications

Experimental validation of a dual-receiver radar architecture for snowpack monitoring

Experimental validation of a dual-receiver radar architecture for snowpack monitoring

Snow liquid water content measurement using an open-ended coaxial probe (OECP)

Snow Layer Detection by Pattern Matching in a Multipath Radar Interference Scenario

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