The characterization of global mean sea level is important to predict floods and to quantify water resources for human use and irrigation, especially in coastal regions. Recently, the application of global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R) for water level monitoring has been successfully demonstrated. This paper focuses on the retrieval of sea surface height within a field experiment that was conducted at the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) using the phase-based altimetry method. A continuous phase tracking algorithm, which relies on the GNSS amplitude and phase observations is proposed and works even under rough sea conditions at OSO's coast. Factors impacting the phase-based altimetry model, i.e., atmospheric propagation effects of the GNSS signals and influence of the GNSS-R observation instrument, are discussed. The relationship between the yield of coherent GNSS-R compared to the overall recorded events and the wind speed is investigated in detail. Ground-based sea-level measurements from June 10 to July 3, 2015 demonstrate that altimetric information about the reflecting water surface can be obtained with a root mean square error of 4.37 cm with respect to a reference tide gauge (TG) data set. The sea surface changes, derived from our field experiment and the reference TG, are highly correlated with a correlation coefficient of 0.93. The altimetric information can be retrieved even when the sea surface is very rough, corresponding to wind speeds up to 13 m/s. Moreover, the use of inexpensive conventional GNSS antennas shows that the system is useful for future large-scale sea level monitoring applications including numerous low-cost coastal ground stations.

Snow depth monitoring is meaningful for climate analysis, hydrological research, and snow disaster prevention. Global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) technology uses the relationship between the modulation frequency of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reflector height to monitor snow depth. Existing research on single constellation has made good progress and is gradually developing toward multiconstellation combined inversion. Aiming at the accuracy of snow depth inversion, this article introduces the variational mode decomposition (VMD) algorithm with the characteristics of an adaptive high-pass filter to detrend the SNR data. The experimental results of KIRU station and P351 station show that the VMD algorithm is suitable for different constellations and has better signal separation effect. The snow depth inversion results for both stations are in high agreement with the in situ snow depths provided by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and the SNOTEL network. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the inversion results is reduced by 20%–40% compared to the least-squares fitting (LSF) algorithm, and the correlation coefficients are also greatly improved. Moreover, considering that there is no overlap between the climate station and the inversion area, this article introduces the maximum spectral amplitude as another reference data source and obtains basically consistent experimental conclusions. On this basis, the maximum spectral amplitude is used as the input variable of the entropy method, and the feasibility of the combination strategy is studied. The results show that the combined strategy reduces a little inversion error and improves the temporal resolution of snow depth monitoring. It is of great significance for more accurate and rapid monitoring of snow depth changes and disaster warnings and provides an important reference for further research on the GNSS-R technology.

The global navigation satellite system-reflections (GNSS-R) signal has been confirmed to be useful for retrieving sea level height. At present, the GNSS-interferometric reflectometry (GNSS-IR) technology based on the least square method to process signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) data is restricted by the satellite elevation angle in terms of accuracy and stability. This article proposes a new GNSS-IR model combining variational mode decomposition (VMD) for sea level height estimation. VMD is used to decompose the SNR data into intrinsic mode functions (IMF) of layers with different frequencies, remove the IMF representing the trend item of the SNR data, and reconstruct the remaining IMF components to obtain the SNR oscillation item. In order to verify the validity of the new GNSS-IR model, the measurement data provided by the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden is used to evaluate the performance of the algorithm and its stability in high-elevation range. The experimental results show that the VMD method has good results in terms of accuracy and stability, and has advantages compared to other methods. For the half-year GNSS SNR data, the root mean square error and correlation coefficient of the new model based on the VMD method are 4.86 cm and 0.97, respectively.

The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is important observations in global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) technology. The oscillation frequency in the SNR arc is sensitive to different reflecting surfaces and can be used to build height model to track the variation of snow depth. However, it is difficult to obtain retrieval results with snow depth of zero in the actual snow depth retrieval experiments based on GNSS-R technology, which indicates that the classical model has nonnegligible retrieval errors in the snow-free state. This study aims to realize the detection of ground truth information before snow depth retrieval, i.e., classification of snow-free state and snow-covered state. Machine learning was introduced to achieve the aforementioned purpose and the SNR arc was used as the input data. Compared with the current mainstream topography correction algorithms, the algorithm proposed in this study does not rely on any priori ground measured data and has theoretical universality. The detection results can constrain the retrieval snow depth in the snow-free state and, thus, improve the retrieval accuracy. The experimental results for the 2014 seasonal snowpack at P351 station in Idaho, USA, show that the detection results obtained based on support vector machines agree well with the measured snow depth provided by the SNOTEL network, and the overall detection accuracy can reach about 96%. The daily snowpack state is determined by the majority of SNR arcs detected during the day and is only considered reliable if the percentage exceeds 75%. Only one day of the detection results was inaccurate and only 8 days (8/365) did not reach the set threshold of 75%. With the help of the detection results, the root-mean-square error of snow depth retrieval can be reduced from 20 cm in the classical algorithm to 15 cm, which results in a 25% improvement in retrieval accuracy. Moreover, this study broadens the application value of GNSS signals and provides a reference for the application of SNR in the detection field.

Traditional global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) based on vector tracking (VT) have various structures. However, some GNSS measurements have no connection with the dynamic of the user when the loop loses lock in the shade, e.g. urban canyon, tree shade, etc. To improve the navigation accuracy in a weak environment, a distributed GNSS/inertial navigation system (INS) integrated navigation system based on VT is proposed. The change in the pseudo-range rate and pseudo-range from the loop is employed in the GNSS receiver. The reliable navigation results can be output from a distributed navigation filter according to effective GNSS measurements and modified INS information. The field test shows that the proposed distributed GNSS/INS navigation system can achieve reliable navigation in weak signal environments.