Altimetry using gnss reflectrometry for L5

GNSS reflectrometry offers a low cost alternative for Earth remote sensing and is used to measure, for example, ocean altimetry, wind speed, wind direction and modeling of the ocean surface state. A bistatic configuration, using one right-handed circular polarized and one left-handed circular polarized antenna, was built for this experiment in order to measure direct and reflected L1 and L5 signals. The direct and reflected signals were compared and the path difference between them calculated, leading to altitude measurements with both L1 and L5 signals. Compared to publicly available signals on L1, the higher code rate of L5 will provide higher measurement sensitivity.