MEasurement of Geo-parameters from High-altitude NAvigation Satellite Signals using sDr (MEGHNAD)

Global and Regional Navigation Satellite Systems are well known for their primary purpose i.e. providing a geospatial navigation solution. However, these constellations also provide an opportunity to exploit the reflected satellite signals to extract information about various important environmental parameters such as soil moisture, wind speed at the ocean surface, waterbody area etc. This method has proved to be very cost effective compared to conventional remote sensing techniques. There is a growing interest in the remote-sensing community to use this reflectometry based receiver in the air and space-borne remote sensing missions. Recently Indian navigation satellite constellation, NavIC has reached the Full Operational Capability. NavIC provides signals in L and S-band. There is a significant untapped potential in exploiting synchronized S-band and L-band signals to develop new approaches that can improve the resolution and accuracy of reflectometry-based solution of various environmental parameter estimations. To realize an indigenous low cost, commercially off-the-shelf GNSS and RNSS reflectometry based earth observation solution, this project aims towards a technology demonstration of a Software Defined GPS and NavIC reflectometry receiver.