GSOC's Scatterometry GNSS receiver for ocean remote sensing: Design and initial results

The department of Space Flight Technology at the DLR's German Space Operations Center (GSOC) is currently developing a new Reflectometry/Scatterometry GNSS receiver for ocean remote sensing. This new instrument is being designed to be used in several conditions ranging from terrestrial applications to spaceborne GNSS experiments. One of its key features is the ability to compute at different scales a Delay Doppler Map (through time multiplexing the doppler space) on one reflection event at a time using a 3×3 fully digitally steerable antenna array. Another feature is to perform digital beamforming of the incoming downconverted digitized GPS signal after IF carrier and C/A demodulation. This significantly reduces the technical requirements and costs of the analog RF front-end chain and the computation bandwidth at the FPGA respectively. A prototype version of this Scatterometry GNSSR receiver is being developed as a proof of concept, using the Namuru II board as development platform.