GNSS Application in Retrieving Sea Wind Speed

Abstract

In traditional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) application, the reflected GNSS signals from Earth's surface generally are considered as an interference source to be suppressed or removed. Recently, a new idea which treats the reflected GNSS signal as opportunity source of remote sensing has been proposed to monitor Earth's physical parameters. This technique is called as GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) which has the advantages of low-power,-mass and-cost. With the development and modernization of GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou system, spaceborne GNSS could significantly improve the temporal-spatial resolution by receiving and processing the reflected signal from multiple satellites. This chapter mainly describes this new bi-static remote sensing technique. First, basic theories of GNSS-R including spatial geometry, polarization, and scattering model of reflected signal are discussed; second, spaceborne receivers and fastresponse processing methods are reviewed and analyzed; finally, the empirical models retrieving wind speed are proposed and demonstrated using the DDM data from the UK-TechDomeSat-1 satellite. Based on the discussion of this chapter, it could be concluded that although GNSS-R still has some key challenges which have to be addressed, it could be an optimal choice of remote sensing in some special conditions, such as the tropical cyclone.