Global Ocean Altimetry With GNSS Reflections From TechDemoSat-1

TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) is an experimental Global Navigation Satellite System Reflections (GNSS-R) satellite launched in 2014. The GNSS-R receiver onboard performs real-time navigation and generates delay–Doppler correlation maps for Earth-reflected Global Positioning System (GPS) L1 C/A ranging signals. This paper investigates the performance of the TDS-1 data for ocean surface altimetry retrievals. The analysis includes consideration of the transmitter and receiver orbits, time tag corrections, models for ionospheric and tropospheric delays, zenith to nadir antenna baseline offsets, ocean and solid Earth tides, and a comparison with mean sea surface topography. An error budget is compiled to account for each error source and compared with the experimentally derived surface height retrievals. By analyzing data sets covering global ocean surfaces over ±60° latitude, the current performance of spaceborne GNSS-R altimetry with the TDS-1 data set is experimentally established. In comparison with the mean sea surface topography, the surface height residuals are found to be 6.4 m, $1\sigma $ with a 1-s integration time. A discussion of the factors limiting this performance is presented, with implications for future GNSS-R altimetry missions designed for the observation of mesoscale ocean circulation.

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