Bistatic Scattering of GPS Signals Off Arctic Sea Ice

This paper evaluates the potential of a global positioning system (GPS) bistatic radar for the retrieval of information concerning the presence and condition of sea ice cover. For this purpose, the permittivity and roughness of a ground scattering target at L-band are extracted from reflected GPS waveforms collected from an airborne platform using the Kirchhoff approximation for the surface cross section. The retrieved GPS estimates are then evaluated against collocated measurements of surface roughness obtained from a lidar profiler and a reference classification of sea ice types inferred from a multisensor data set that includes polarimetric microwave emissions, RADARSAT backscatter, and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer infrared/visible imagery.