Soil moisture observation utilizing reflected global navigaiton satellite system signals

As a new tool, GNSS-R with L-band navigation satellite signal has been applied to measure soil moisture based on its higher performance and lower cost. This paper analyzes the reflected signals from navigation satellite and the soil moisture calculation model from the electromagnetic wave polarization and dielectric constant. One ground based experiment was conducted in Beijing Vegetable Research Center for validation. Data processing result shows that the scattered GPS signals with high elevation could be used for soil moisture computation through ICF model. In-situ observations were compared for the further analyses in terms of measurement accuracy.