Simulation based tropical cyclone sensing using space-based GNSS-R

A technique to sense tropical cyclone using the reflections from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellites is presented in this paper. The two exponential vortex model proposed by Willoughby is employed to generate the cyclone wind profile which is used to simulate the delay-Doppler map (DDM) of the cyclone dominated sea surface based on the Zavorotny and Voronovich (Z-V) GNSS scattering model. Subsequently, the spatial integration approach (SIA) is applied to retrieve the scattering coefficients from the simulated DDMs. Two cases in which the cyclone eye co-locates with the specular point (SP) and is away from the SP are analyzed. A performance characterization including retrieval accuracy is demonstrated with respect to cyclone location. Simulated retrieval result shows that the technique proposed is promising.