A Mission Design Tool for Satellite Constellations Using Multi-Frequency Signals of Opportunity

Multi-frequency and multi-polarization Signals of Opportunity Reflectometry (SoOp-R) has the potential to monitor global root-zone soil moisture (RZSM) at a high spatiotemporal resolution using a constellation of small satellites. This paper introduces a mission design tool to assist the high-level design of multi-frequency SoOp-R missions and presents an example of tradespace analysis. Hundreds of constellation design alternatives were enumerated and compared using standard scoring functions that aggregate cost and coverage metrics for the multi-frequency SoOp-R mission. This comprehensive tool will be valuable in the development of future science missions using SoOp-R.