FengYun-3E (FY3E), launched on 5 July 2021, is one of China’s polar-orbiting meteorological satellite series. The GNOS II onboard FY3E is an operational GNSS remote sensor that for the first time combines GNSS radio occultation (GNSS RO) and GNSS reflectometry (GNSS-R). It has eight reflection channels that can track eight specular points at the same time, receiving reflected signals from multiple GNSS systems, including GPS, BeiDou and Galileo. The basic GNSS-R output generated by GNOS II is a 122 × 20 non-uniform delay-Doppler map whose high resolution portion captures more information near the specular point. This paper introduces the GNSS-R aspect of the FengYun-3E GNOS II, including the instrument, power calibration and wind speed retrieval algorithm. Preliminary validation results for its first four months of data are also presented. After preliminary quality control, the overall wind speed error is less than 2 m/s at wind speeds below 20 m/s for data from both GPS satellites and BeiDou satellites when compared to the ECMWF reanalysis winds.

The Global Navigation Satellite System Occultation Sounder II (GNOS-II) payload onboard the Chinese Fengyun-3E (FY-3E) satellite is the world’s first operational spaceborne mission that can utilize reflected signals from multiple navigation systems for Earth remote sensing. The satellite was launched into an 836-km early-morning polar orbit on 5 July 2021. Different GNSS signals show different characteristics in the observations and thus require different calibration methods. With an average data latency of less than 3 h, many near real-time applications are possible. This article first introduces the FY-3E/GNOS-II mission and instrument design, then describes the extensive calibration methods for the multi-GNSS measurements, and finally presents application results in the remote sensing of ocean surface winds, land soil moisture and sea ice extent. Especially, the ocean surface wind product has been used in operational applications such as assimilation in the numerical weather prediction model and monitoring of tropical cyclones. Currently, GNOS-II has been carried by FY-3E, FY-3F (launched in August 2023) and FY-3G (launched in April 2023). It will be also carried by future follow-on FY series and a more complete multi-GNSS reflectometry constellation will be established.

The reflected GNSS signals at the L-band is significantly advantageous in soil moisture monitoring as they are sensitive to the dielectric properties determined by the volumetric water content of topsoil, and they can penetrate vegetation, except in very dense forests. The Global Navigation satellite system Occultation Sounder (GNOS-II) with a reflectometry technique onboard the Fengyun-3E (FY-3E) satellite, launched on 5 July 2021, is the first mission that can receive reflected Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals from GPS, BeiDou and Galileo systems. This paper presents the soil moisture retrieval results from the FY-3E GNOS-II mission using 16 months of data. In this study, the reflectivity observations from different GNSS systems were firstly intercalibrated with some differences analyzed. Observations were also corrected by considering vegetation attenuation for 16 different land cover classifications. Finally, an empirical model was constructed for volumetric soil moisture (VSM) estimation, where the reflectivity of GNOS-II was linearly related to the SMAP reference soil moisture for each 36 km ease grid. The overall root-mean-square error of the retrieved soil moisture is 0.049 compared with the SMAP product, and 0.054 compared with the in situ data. The results of the three GNSS systems show similar levels of accuracy. This paper, for the first time, demonstrates the feasibility of global soil moisture retrieval using multiple GNSS signals.

Reflected Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals from Earth surface can be received by receivers at Low Earth Orbit for the remote sensing of geophysical parameters. While the technique has been studied for around 30 years, most early spaceborne GNSS reflectometry missions only adapted to receive GPS signals and the studies of reflected Galileo (GAL) signals in space are limited. The GNOS-II payload onboard the FY-3E satellite is the first mission that can operationally receive reflected GPS, BeiDou (BDS) and GAL signals at the same time. This paper presents the GAL reflectometry measurements from GNOS-II together with their calibration and wind speed retrieval methods. Results show that while GAL has a different signal modulation, the observables can be used to retrieve wind speeds using the same geophysical model functions of GPS after a dedicated calibration. The retrieved wind speeds from GAL also have a comparable accuracy as those from GPS and BDS.

Differential code biases (DCBs) are important parameters in GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) applications such as positioning as well as ionosphere remote sensing. In comparison to the conventional approach, which utilizes ground-based observations and parameterizes global ionosphere maps together with DCBs, a method is presented for GPS and BeiDou system (BDS) satellite DCB estimation using onboard observations from the Chinese Fengyun-3C (FY3C) satellite. One month worth of GPS and BDS data during March 2015 was exploited and the GPS C1C-C2W and BDS C2I-C7I DCBs were explored. To improve DCB estimation precision, the dual frequency carrier phase measurements leveled by code measurements were used to form basic observation equation. Code multipath errors of the FY3C onboard GPS/BDS observations were assessed and modeled as grid maps, and their impact on DCB estimation was analyzed. By correcting code multipath errors, the stability of DCB estimates was improved by 5.0%, 3.1%, 16.2% and 13.6% for GPS, and BDS geosynchronous orbit satellites (GEOs), inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit satellites (IGSOs) and medium Earth orbit satellites (MEOs), respectively. The monthly stability of FY3C-based DCBs was at the order of 0.1 ns for GPS satellites, 0.2 ns for BDS GEOs and 0.1 ns for BDS IGSOs and MEOs. By comparison to the ground-based DCB products issued by other institutions, FY3C-based DCBs showed stability degradation for BDS C02 and C05 satellites, while, for other satellites, the stability reached a similar or even superior level. The estimated FY3C receiver DCB stability was at the order of 0.2 ns for both GPS and BDS. In addition to the DCB estimates, the obtained vertical total electron content above the FY3C satellite orbit was also investigated and its realism was examined in physical and numerical aspects.