First results of a GNSS-R experiment from a stratospheric balloon over boreal forests
The empirical results of a global navigation satellite systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) experiment onboard the Balloon EXperiments for University Students (BEXUS) 17 stratospheric balloon performed north of Sweden over boreal forests show that the power of the reflected signals is nearly independent o...
| Autores: | , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/102872 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/102872 https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2015.2504242 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Remote sensing Taigas Boreal forests Global navigation satellite systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) Stratospheric balloon Ocean altimetry Scattering Reflectometry Signals Coherent Precision Surface System Bare Teledetecció Taigàs Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació::Radiocomunicació i exploració electromagnètica::Teledetecció |
| Sumario: | The empirical results of a global navigation satellite systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) experiment onboard the Balloon EXperiments for University Students (BEXUS) 17 stratospheric balloon performed north of Sweden over boreal forests show that the power of the reflected signals is nearly independent of the platform height for a high coherent integration time T-c = 20 ms. This experimental evidence shows a strong coherent component in the forward scattered signal, as compared with the incoherent component, that allows to be tracked. The bistatic coherent reflectivity is also evaluated as a function of the elevation angle, showing a decrease of similar to 6 dB when the elevation angle increases from 35. to 70 degrees. The received power presents a clearly multimodal behavior, which also suggests that the coherent scattering component may be taking place in different forest elements, i.e., soil, canopy, and through multiple reflections canopy-soil and soil-trunk. This experiment has provided the first GNSS-R data set over boreal forests. The evaluation of these results can be useful for the feasibility study of this technique to perform biomass monitoring that is a key factor to analyze the carbon cycle. |
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