Warnock, A.; Ruf, C.S.; Knoll, A.L. Characterization of River Width Measurement Capability by Space Borne GNSS-Reflectometry. Remote Sens.2024, 16, 1446.
Warnock, A.; Ruf, C.S.; Knoll, A.L. Characterization of River Width Measurement Capability by Space Borne GNSS-Reflectometry. Remote Sens. 2024, 16, 1446.
Warnock, A.; Ruf, C.S.; Knoll, A.L. Characterization of River Width Measurement Capability by Space Borne GNSS-Reflectometry. Remote Sens.2024, 16, 1446.
Warnock, A.; Ruf, C.S.; Knoll, A.L. Characterization of River Width Measurement Capability by Space Borne GNSS-Reflectometry. Remote Sens. 2024, 16, 1446.
Abstract
In recent years, Global Navigation Satellite System reflectometry (GNSS-R) has been explored as a methodology for inland water body characterization. However, thorough characterization of the sensitivity and behavior of the GNSS-R signal to inland water bodies is still needed to progress this area of research. In this paper, we characterize the uncertainty associated with Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) measurements on the determination of river width. The characterization study uses simulated data from a forward model that accurately simulates CYGNSS observations of mixed water/land scenes. The accuracy of the forward model is demonstrated by comparisons to actual observations of known water body shapes made at particular measurement geometries. Simulated CYGNSS data is generated over a range of synthetic scenes modeling a straight river subreach, and the results are analyzed to determine a predictive relationship between the peak SNR measured over the river subreaches and the river widths. An uncertainty analysis conducted using the predictive relationship indicates that for simplistic river scenes, the SNR over the river is predictive of the river width to within +/-5m. The presence of clutter (surrounding water bodies) within ~500m of the river causes perturbations in the SNR measured over the river that can render the river width retrievals unreliable. The results of this study indicate that under idealized conditions, GNSS-R data is able to measure river widths as narrow as 160m with high accuracy.
Keywords
Riverine remote sensing; GNSS Reflectometry; CYGNSS; flood prediction; Water masks
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Remote Sensing
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
