SPACEBORNE DEMONSTRATION OF P-BAND SIGNALS OF OPPORTUNITY REMOTE SENSING: INSTRUMENT MODELING AND VALIDATION

Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) reflectometry allows the reuse of existing communication signals as sources of illumination for remote sensing. The Signals of Opportunity P-band Investigation (SNOOPI) mission is a spaceborne technology demonstration of a P-Band SoOp receiver. P-Band frequencies allow for deeper penetration depths for soil moisture sensing than conventional L-Band radar instruments. P-Band also allows for higher precision in applications requiring phase unwrapping such as Snow Water Equivalent measurements.

To support the SNOOPI instrument development and analysis, a bit-level simulator was developed to verify the microwave instrument and digital signal processor unit. A groundmonitoring station was developed to monitor the SoOp source’s Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP), background noise sky-map verification, and self-ambiguity function monitoring.

An overview of tower based instruments implementing the SoOp receiver technique is also provided.