Geophysical Relationship between Cygnss GNSS-R Bistatic Reflectivity and Smap Microwave Radiometry Brightness Temperature Over Land Surfaces

This work presents an assessment on the correlation between CyGNSS-derived Global Navigation Satellite Systems Reflectometry (GNSS-R) bistatic reflectivity Γ
_rl
and SMAP-derived brightness temperature T
_B
, over land surfaces. This parametric-study is performed as a function of Soil Moisture Content (SMC), and vegetation opacity τ. Several target areas are selected to evaluate potential differentiated geophysical effects on “active” (as many transmitters as navigation satellites are in view), and passive approaches. Although microwave radiometry has potentially a better sensitivity to SMC, the spatial resolution is poor ~ 40 km. On the other hand, GNSS-R bistatic coherent radar footprint is limited by half of the first Fresnel zone which provides about ~ 150 m of spatial resolution (depending on the geometry). The synergetic combination of both techniques could provide advantages with respect to active monostatic Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).