Remote sensing of ocean, ice and land surfaces using bistatically reflected GNSS signals from low Earth orbit

The reflection of (Global Navigation Satellites) signals from the Earth´s surface has progressed to demonstrate a practical linkage of measurements to geophysical description of ocean, ice and land areas. Since launch of the small constellation, it has been successfully used to target and detect specular reflections of GPS signals after scattering from the Earth´s oceans, ice sheets and land surfaces. All data sets have exposed reflected signals, including signals reflected off the ocean under different ocean conditions. This reveals that GNSS Reflectometry is a suitable future technology for space based Earth remote sensing, even when deployed on the UK DMC low Earth orbiting satellite system. This paper presents a summary of the signals collected from over the ocean, and an examination of the signal relationship to the ocean wind and wave conditions is presented. The initial results from ice and land surfaces reflection analysis are also described.