GNSS-R altimeter performance: Analysis of Cramer-Rao lower bounds

Earth-reflected Global Navigation Satellite System-signals have become an attractive tool for remote sensing, being proposed as a means to perform ocean altimetry, among many other applications. The technique exploiting navigation signals is widely known as GNSS-R. In this paper the well-known Cramer-Rao lower bound is used to predict the sea surface height estimation precision of a GNSS-R based spaceborne altimeter, exploiting the open-access GPS L1 C/A code signal. Real spaceborne data acquired by the GPS-R receiver on-board UK-DMC satellite is used to extract statistical properties of spaceborne GPS reflected signals.