Standard Deviation of Spaceborne GNSS-R Ocean Scatterometry Measurements

This article analyzes the contribution of the delay-Doppler map (DDM) observation noise to the uncertainty of global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R) ocean scatterometry observables and the retrieved wind speeds. For this purpose, the parameter K-p, which is commonly used in the traditional microwave scatterometer, is introduced to characterize the relative standard deviation (RSD) of the GNSS-R normalized bistatic radar cross section (NBRCS) measurement. Based on the noise covariance of the DDM measurements, the analytic expressions of RSD are derived for two cases, i.e., the NBRCS computed with one single DDM bin at the specular point and the NBRCS computed from M x N DDM bins around the specular point. By analyzing the dependence of the RSD on different system, geometry, and instrument parameters, the simplified models of RSD are derived empirically. As a simple application of the proposed models, the wind speed retrieval errors are computed using parameters from the Cyclone GNSS (CYGNSS) mission. It shows that the wind speed retrieval error due to thermal noise and speckle can be an important error source for the overall wind speed retrieval performance, especially at high wind speed and with the high incidence angle GNSS-R measurements.