Antarctic sea ice detection using a shipborne GPS reflectometry setup

• Published in: Measurement and Control
• Main Authors: Yun Zhang, Dehao Ma, Wanting Meng, Xiangfang Xie, Shuhu Yang, Sijia Hang, Yanling Han, Zhonghua Hong
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2021
• Subjects: Control engineering systems. Automatic machinery (General); TJ212-225; Technology (General); T1-995; Antarctic; Antarc*; National Snow and Ice Data Center; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/00202940211013063; https://doaj.org/article/594f452b894b49abb4e0d802400f6a5a

The feasibility of Antarctic sea ice detection based on shipborne global positioning system reflectometry (GPS-R) technology is shown in this paper. Because the permittivity of sea water is much higher than that of sea ice, the reflected left-handed circular polarized (LHCP) GPS signal (RL) reflection coefficient of sea water is markedly higher than that of sea ice. The polarization ratio of RL to the direct right-handed circular polarized (RHCP) GPS signal (DR) is used to distinguish between sea water and sea ice in this paper. The experiment was performed on the ship “XueLong” for approximately 9 days from December 2014 to January 2015 during the 31st Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE 31). The sea ice concentration data with a 25 km × 25 km spatial resolution derived from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) are used for validation and some pictures of sea ice taken from “XueLong” are shown for comparison. The polarization ratios (RL/DR) are calculated, and the correlation coefficient between the polarization ratios (RL/DR) and the sea ice concentrations is −0.66.