Impact of the observation geometry on the GNSS-R direct descriptors used for sea state monitoring

Abstract

In recent years GNSS-R has been proposed for ocean remote sensing, both for altimetry and scatterometry. For the later, two main approaches are available: fitting the measurements with a model, or using some observable from the measurements (either the waveform or the delay-Doppler Map) to be directly linked to ocean surface’s roughness. For groundbased and airborne experiments, several direct observables have been proposed to describe ocean surface’s roughness, and they have been used assuming that the observation geometry had little impact on them. However, it may not be true for a spaceborne scenario, since the dynamics are higher. In this work an extensive simulation study is performed, and the first results on how the observation geometry does impact different GNSS-R direct observables is presented.