A special-purpose software Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver designed for remote sensing with reflected GPS signals is described in "Delay/Doppler-Mapping GPS-Reflection Remote-Sensing System" (NPO-30385), which appears on the previous page. The input accepted by this program comprises raw (open-loop) digitized GPS signals sampled at a rate of about 20 MHz. The program processes the data samples to perform the following functions: detection of signals; tracking of phases and delays; mapping of delay, Doppler, and delay/Doppler waveforms; dual-frequency processing; coherent integrations as short as 125 μs; decoding of navigation messages; and precise time tagging of observable quantities. The software can perform these functions on all detectable satellite signals without dead time. Open-loop data collected over water, land, or ice and processed by this software can be further processed to extract geophysical information. Possible examples include mean sea height, wind speed and direction, and significant wave height (for observations over the ocean); bistatic-radar terrain images and measures of soil moisture and biomass (for observations over land); and estimates of ice age, thickness, and surface density (for observations over ice).

This program was written by Stephen Lowe of Caltech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Don Hart of the California Institute of Technology at (818) 393- 3425. Refer to NPO-30386.



This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).
Document cover
Software for a GPS-Reflection Remote-Sensing System

(reference NPO-30386) is currently available for download from the TSP library.

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