Soil moisture retrieval using reflected signals of BeiDou GEO satellites

This paper proposes a method of continuous long-term soil moisture measurement using signals from BeiDou GEO satellites. It also presents the soil moisture inversion model as well as the relevant signal processing steps. Moreover, a land-based experiment is carried out to verify its validity. This method adopts the dual-antenna Global Navigation Satellite System Reflection (GNSS-R) mode to receive and process direct signal from BeiDou GEO satellites and reflected signal from soil. Based on signal synchronization, the reflectivity of soil can be calculated according to the extracted signal power values. And then, the soil moisture can be obtained in light of the inversion model. By taking singals from BeiDou GEO satellites, not only the positioning calculation step of general GNSS-R data processing can be ignored, but also a continuous long-term observation of soil moisture for fixed area can be realized. Experiment results based on the method above show a good continuity in both time and magnitude. They are also highly consistent with reference values and the root mean square error equals to 0.049. Compared with BeiDou IGSO and GPS MEO satellites, BeiDou GEO satellites can present a better performance in soil moisture retrieval.