GNSS reflectometry

GNSS reflectometry involves making measurements from the reflections from the Earth of navigation signals from Global Navigation Satellite Systems such as GPS. It is also known as "GPS reflectometry".

Deliberately bouncing signals off something to learn about it (e.g. radar, echolocation) is "active sensing"; sensing what is already available in the surrounding environment without changing the environment to do so (e.g. eyesight, hearing) is "passive sensing". GNSS reflectometry is passive sensing that takes advantage of and relies on separate active sources - the satellites generating the navigation signals.

The UK-DMC satellite, part of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, carries a secondary reflectometry payload that has demonstrated the feasibility of receiving and measuring GPS signals reflected from the surface of the Earth's oceans from its track in low Earth orbit to determine wave motion and windspeed.S. Gleason "et al.", Processing of bistatically reflected GPS signals from low Earth orbit for the purpose of ocean remotesensing, [http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2005.845643 IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing] , Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 1229-1241, June 2005.]

References

External links

* [http://www.e4engineering.com/Articles/297081/Reflecting+on+the+future.htm Reflecting on the future] , The Engineer Online, 28 November 2006.
* [http://www.gnssr-05.com/downloads.html GNSSR-05 workshop] , University of Surrey, June 2005.