Fully Polarimetric Airborne Wind Vector Scatterometer to Support Space-Borne Gnss-R Measurements

A fully polarimetric Airborne Wind Vector Scatterometer (AWVS) is developed to provide independent airborne wind vector measurements for validation of space-borne GNSS-R measurements. The scatterometer is designed to meet 1 m/s wind speed accuracy requirement. In this ad hoc and low-budget project, the instrument development exploited on some already existing subsystems. The development started from scientific system requirement definition and ended to two experiment flights for wind vector retrieval from three areas at the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea. One of the flights was carried out with a simultaneous overpass of the TDS-l satellite, conducting the GNSS-R measurements. The results confirm the measurement capabilities of the GNSS-R technology and the desired 1 m/s wind speed accuracy of the developed scatterometer. Moreover, the fully polarimetric backscattering results support well other recent measurements and models of cross-polarized sea surface scattering.