Rice is one of the agricultural crops most suited to
monitoring with the SAR instruments. Backscatter response
measured by SAR is correlated with rice conditions, including
height, density, biomass and structure, which are variable at
different growing stages. In this paper, multi-date Envisat ASAR
Alternating Polarization Mode (APMode) imageries were
acquired during the rice crop growing cycle. At the same time,
the rice parameters were measured in field. A continuous canopy
model was used to compute the backscatter from rice fields
during the growth cycle. The simulated backscattering
coefficients were compared with the ASAR image data, and the
relationship of rice parameters and radar backscattering
coefficients from both ASAR and modeling were analyzed.. It
was found that simulated radar backscatter has similar trends as
ASAR data, and that the HV polarization data is more suitable
for rice parameters estimation. This will be meaningful for the
further research of rice parameters estimation from ASAR data.