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A first comprehensive evaluation of China’s GNSS-R airborne campaign: part II—river remote sensing

中国GNSS-R机载实验综合评估 第二部分:河流遥感

  • Article
  • Earth Sciences
  • Published:
Science Bulletin

Abstract

The Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) has been proven to be a powerful technique for retrieving geophysical parameters of ocean and land. Airborne GNSS-R is an important experimental platform, because it is not only needed as validation for spaceborne application, but also possesses the advantages to be capable of remote sensing of small and medium scale targets, such as rivers and lakes. This paper presents an overview of China’s airborne GNSS-R campaign conducted on May 30, 2014, in Henan. The campaign has two objectives, i.e.: (1) to examine the capability of a GNSS-R payload developed by National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NSSC, CAS) for airborne observations and (2) to study the algorithms for soil moisture and river remote sensing, including altimetry and flow velocity measurement. A previous paper has presented results of soil moisture retrieval as part I, and in this paper, initial results of the Yellow River remote sensing are presented as part II. This paper presents the river altimetry results and explores a new potential application of GNSS-R technology, which is used to detect the flow velocity of the river. The river surface height results observed by code delay altimetry method were consistent with the height results of GPS dual-frequency differential positioning altimetry. The GNSS-R altimetry results showed that decimeter level heights were achieved in 1-min sliding average. Comparing with in situ measurements, the GNSS-R flow velocity result was reasonable; the error was about 0.027 m/s, which indicated the validity and feasibility of using GNSS-R technique to detect river flow velocity.

摘要

全球卫星导航定位系统的反射信号(GNSS-R)遥感是反演陆地和海洋表面地球物理参数的有力工具。而机载GNSS-R是一个很重要的实验平台,因为它不仅可以为空基实验提供校准依据,而且在中小尺度目标(比如河流和湖泊)的遥感方面独具优势。本文描述了2014年5月30日在河南的一次机载实验。实验有两个目的:1)检测中国科学院国家空间科学中心研发的GNSS-R有效载荷的实验观测能力,2)研究土壤湿度测量和河流遥感的具体算法,其中河流遥感包括高度和流速测量。关于该次试验土壤湿度遥感的论文已经作为实验成果的第一部发表,此篇关于GNSS-R河流遥感的论文将作为实验成果的第二部分。试验结果表明:通过GNSS-R码相位延迟测高法对河流表面高度的测量结果与用GPS双频差分定位的结果相一致,一分钟的滑动平均结果可以达到分米级的精度。此外,本文发展了GNSS-R遥感的一个新领域,即GNSS-R河流流速测量,通过与现场的测量结果对比,GNSS-R的流速测量误差约0.027 m/s,从而证明了GNSS-R流速测量的可行性和有效性。

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Youth Natural Science Foundations of China (41405040 and 41405039), the Scientific Research and Equipment Development Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (YZ201129) and the 12th Five-Year Plan of Civil Aerospace Technology Advanced Research Projects (Y1K0030044), and we highly appreciate professor Estel Cardellach from IEEC for her great suggestions. We also strongly acknowledge all the colleagues who worked for the airborne campaign, and they are Huang Li, Qing Xia, Wen Li, Qiangqiang Meng, Chuandong Xu.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Weihua Bai, Junming Xia, Yueqiang Sun, Xiangguang Meng, Congliang Liu, Hua Chen, Qifei Du, Dongwei Wang, Danyang Zhao & Xianyi Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Wei Wan

  3. Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Wei Wan

  4. Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Limin Zhao

  5. The Center for National Spaceborne Demonstration, Beijing, 100101, China

    Limin Zhao

  6. State Intellectual Property Office of the Peoples’ Republic of China, Beijing, 100088, China

    Cheng Cheng

Authors
  1. Weihua Bai
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  2. Junming Xia
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  3. Wei Wan
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  4. Limin Zhao
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  5. Yueqiang Sun
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  6. Xiangguang Meng
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  7. Congliang Liu
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  8. Hua Chen
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  10. Dongwei Wang
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  11. Danyang Zhao
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  12. Xianyi Wang
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  13. Cheng Cheng
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiangguang Meng.

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Bai, W., Xia, J., Wan, W. et al. A first comprehensive evaluation of China’s GNSS-R airborne campaign: part II—river remote sensing. Sci. Bull. 60, 1527–1534 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-015-0869-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-015-0869-x

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