This paper presents an assessment of the correlation between CyGNSS-derived global navigation satellite systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) bistatic reflectivity, Γ rl , and soil moisture active passive (SMAP) derived brightness temperature, T I /2, over land surfaces. This parametric study is performed as a function of soil moisture content (SMC), vegetation opacity τ , and albedo ω. Several target areas, classified according to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) land cover types, are selected to evaluate potential differentiated geophysical effects on "active" (as many transmitters as navigation satellites are in view) and passive approaches. Although microwave radiometry has potentially a better sensitivity to SMC, the spatial resolution achievable from a spaceborne platform is poor, ∼40 km. On the other hand, GNSS-R bistatic coherent radar pixel-size is limited by half of the first Fresnel zone, which provides about ∼150 m of spatial resolution (depending on the geometry). The main objective of this "active"/passive combination is twofold: a) downscaling the SMC, b) complement the information of microwave radiometry with GNSS-R data to improve the accuracy in SMC determination. The Pearson linear correlation coefficient of Γ rl and T I /2 obtained over Thailand, Argentinian Pampas, and Amazon is ∼−0.87, ∼−0.7, and ∼−0.26, respectively, while the so-called tau-omega model is used to fit the data. Results over croplands are quite promising and deserve special attention since the use of GNSS-R could benefit agricultural and hydrological applications because of: a) the high spatio-temporal sampling properties, b) the high spatial resolution, and c) the potential combination with microwave radiometry to improve the accuracy of the measurements.
This work describes the first global scale assessment of a Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (GNSS-R) experiment performed on-board the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission for soil moisture and biomass determination. Scattered GPS L2 signals (1227.6 MHz) were collected by the SMAP's dual-polarization (Horizontal H and Vertical V) radar receiver and then processed on-ground using a known replica of the GPS L2C code. The scattering properties over land are evaluated using the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), the Polarimetric Ratio (PR), and the width of the waveforms' trailing and leading edges. These parameters show sensitivity to the effects of the Earth's topography and Above Ground Biomass (ABG) even over Amazonian and Boreal forests. These effects are shown to be an important factor in precise soil moisture and biomass determination. Additionally, it is found that PR shows sensitivity to soil moisture content over different land cover types. In particular, the following values of the PR are found over: (a) tropical forests~−1.2 dB; (b) boreal forests~0.8 dB; (c) Greenland~2.8 dB; and (d) the Sahara Desert~3.2 dB.
This work describes a novel dual-band Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometer (GNSS-R) that uses the P(Y) and C/A signals scattered over the sea surface to perform highly precise altimetric measurements. The results derived from two different ground-based field experiments over a dam and over the sea under different surface's roughness conditions are presented. The analysis of the altimetric performance shows that the results obtained using the P(Y) code improve by a factor between 1.4 and 2.4 as compared to the results obtained using the C/A code, respectively, for high and mid-low satellite's elevation angles.
• . The received power presents a clearly multimodal behavior, which also suggests that the coherent scattering component may be taking place in different forest elements, i.e., soil, canopy, and through multiple reflections canopy-soil and soil-trunk. This experiment has provided the first GNSS-R data set over boreal forests. The evaluation of these results can be useful for the feasibility study of this technique to perform biomass monitoring that is a key factor to analyze the carbon cycle.Index Terms-Boreal forests, global navigation satellite systems reflectometry (GNSS-R), stratospheric balloon.
Abstract-Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) is a multi-static radar using navigation signals as signals of opportunity. It provides wide-swath and improved spatio-temporal sampling over current space-borne missions. The lack of experimental datasets from space covering signals from multiple constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Beidou) at dual-band (L1 and L2), and dual-polarization (Right and Left Hand Circular Polarization: RHCP and LHCP), over the ocean, land and cryosphere remains a bottleneck to further develop these techniques. 3
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