MIR: The microwave interferometric reflectometer, a new airborne sensor for GNSS-R advanced research

The use of Global Navigation Satellite Signals (GNSS) in reflectometric applications (GNSS-R) is highly extended in remote sensing applications, such as sensing sea state, soil moisture or ice layer characterization. There are two main techniques in this field: the conventional GNSS-R, that achieves high SNRs by cross-correlating the received signal with a replica of the transmitted one but, with a low resolution due to narrow bandwidth of the signals, and the interferometric GNSS-R, which achieves better resolutions but with lower SNRs since it directly correlates the direct and reflected signals. The Microwave Interferometric Reflectometer (MIR) is a new sensor that will use high-directivity, multiband and steerable arrays to achieve higher SNRs in the interferometric technique. Additionally, it will also apply the conventional technique. All these capabilities will be applied simultaneously to two beams at each band (L1 and L5 / E1 and E5). This work describes this concept instrument and the first prototypes will be presented at the conference.