162346 20251017144630.0 doi 10.1109/TGRS.2025.3585426 sideral 144885 ART-2025-144885 eng Herráiz-López, Víctor Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0009-0007-8481-0981 Full Winter Season Measurement of Snowpack Height and Backscattering Coefficient Using a 120-GHz Ultrawideband FMCW Radar 2025 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted In this article, we present a 120-GHz ultrawideband (3.3 GHz) frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar, designed using a millimeter-wave (mmWave) transceiver, and its application to the measurement of snowpack height over two full winter seasons. This system achieves 2 cm accuracy across the diverse snowpack and environmental conditions encountered during the winter season. Its main advantages over conventional measurement techniques are good performance during heavy snowfall, correct detection of fresh fallen snow, spatial averaging, and low temperature dependence. Furthermore, our system is able to measure the backscattering coefficient of the snowpack, which is predominantly influenced by the liquid water content (LWC) of its surface layer. This relationship is confirmed by experimental measurements and numerical simulations, and could enable noninvasive first layer LWC estimations. Hence, we prove mmWave radar to be a reliable technology for snowpack monitoring under different environmental and snowpack conditions, with a wide range of applications in hydrological forecasting, avalanche risk assessment, and environmental monitoring. info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/AEI/PID2021-124451OB-I00 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/AEI/TED2021-131180B-I00 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA-FSE/T20-23R info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.es info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Subías Martín, Adrián Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0002-3813-6136 Salinas, Iñigo Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0002-6144-7928 Buisán, Samuel T. Alonso, Rafael Universidad de Zaragoza (orcid)0000-0003-0775-4641 2002 385 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Física Aplicada Área Física Aplicada 5008 800 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Ingeniería Electrón.Com. Área Teoría Señal y Comunicac. 63 (2025), 4302011 [11 pp.] IEEE trans. geosci. remote sens. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING 0196-2892 1926075 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/162346/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 3579547 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/162346/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:162346 articulos driver 2025-10-17-14:26:03 ARTICLE