Interferometric GNSS-R achievable altimetric performance and compression/denoising using the wavelet transform: An experimental study

Reflectometry using Global Navigation Satellite System's (GNSS) opportunity signals was originally conceived for altimetry [1]. However, when the GNSS signals scatter over the Earth's surface (or propagates through the atmosphere), the amplitude and polarization characteristics change, which can be used for many other remote sensing applications such as sea state, water level, soil moisture, vegetation height, snow depth monitoring, atmospheric profiling... ([2], [3] among many others). In [4] and [5], recent experimental results from an ESA-sponsored airborne campaign carried out in June and November 2011 in the Baltic sea are presented using conventional and interferometric GNSS-R, respectively. In this work the properties of the measured interferometric GNSS-R waveforms are studied, and the wavelet transform is applied to compress and denoise the waveforms. This is of interest for future missions, such as ESA's proposal of PARIS IoD, to reduce the amount of data to be stored on board and downloaded to Earth.