Simulation of TechDemoSat-1 Delay-Doppler Maps for GPS Ocean Reflectometry

The increasing diffusion of spaceborne GNSS reflectometry as a remote sensing technique has motivated, recently, the development of end-to-end delay-Doppler map simulators. We present here the most relevant issues involved in the design of a simulator for applications of ocean wind remote sensing with a conventional acquisition technique. The approach is based on the stochastic Monte Carlo simulation of the scattered signal followed by a 2-D convolution and filtering accounting for the Doppler processing implemented on the TechDemoSat-1 platform. Simulation accuracy is assessed in the validation setup, where ensemble runs are supported by the estimation of the empirical cumulative distribution function.