sea surface altimetry based on airborne gnss signal measurements

In this study the focus is on ocean surface altimetry using the signals transmitted from GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) satellites. A low-altitude airborne experiment was recently conducted off the coast of Sydney. Both a LiDAR experiment and a GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R) experiment were carried out in the same aircraft, at the same time, in the presence of strong wind and rather high wave height. The sea surface characteristics, including the surface height, were derived from processing the LiDAR data. A two-loop iterative method is proposed to calculate sea surface height using the relative delay between the direct and the reflected GNSS signals. The preliminary results indicate that the results obtained from the GNSS-based surface altimetry deviate from the LiDAR-based results significantly. Identification of the error sources and mitigation of the errors are needed to achieve better surface height estimation performance using GNSS signals.