Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry as a Remote Sensing Tool for Agriculture

Remote Sensing

Alejandro Egido³  Marco Caparrini³  Giulio Ruffini³  Simonetta Paloscia¹  Emanuele Santi¹  Leila Guerriero⁴  Nazzareno Pierdicca² 

[1] Institute for Applied Physics (IFAC), I-50019 Florence, Italy; E-Mails:;DIET, Università di Roma La Sapienza, I-00184 Rome, Italy; E-Mail:;Starlab Barcelona, Teodor Roviralta 45, E-08022 Barcelona, Spain; E-Mails:;DISP, Università di Roma Tor Vergata, I-00133 Rome, Italy; E-Mail:

关键词: GNSS-R;    polarimetry;    soil moisture;    plant water content;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs4082356

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The use of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signals for remote sensing applications, generally referred to as GNSS-Reflectometry (GNSS-R), is gaining increasing interest among the scientific community as a remote sensing tool for land applications. This paper describes a long term experimental campaign in which an extensive dataset of GNSS-R polarimetric measurements was acquired over a crop field from a ground-based stationary platform. Ground truth ancillary data were also continuously recorded during the whole experimental campaign. The duration of the campaign allowed to cover a full crop growing season, and as a consequence of seasonal rains on the experimental area, data could be recorded over a wide variety of soil conditions. This enabled a study on the effects of different land bio-geophysical parameters on GNSS scattered signals. It is shown that significant power variations in the measured GNSS reflected signals can be detected for different soil moisture and vegetation development conditions. In this work we also propose a technique based on the combination of the reflected signal’s polarizations in order to improve the integrity of the observables with respect to nuisance parameters such as soil roughness.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.