Analysis of the Regional Ionosphere at Low Latitudes in Support of the Biomass ESA Mission

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 56; no. 11; pp. 6412 - 6424
• Main Authors: Alfonsi, Lucilla, Povero, Gabriella, Spogli, Luca, Cesaroni, Claudio, Forte, Biagio, Mitchell, Cathryn N., Burston, Robert, Veettil, Sreeja Vadakke, Aquino, Marcio, Klausner, Virginia, Muella, Marcio T. A. H., Pezzopane, Michael, Giuntini, Alessandra, Hunstad, Ingrid, De Franceschi, Giorgiana, Musico, Elvira, Pini, Marco, La The, Vinh, Tran Trung, Hieu, Husin, Asnawi, Ekawati, Sri, de la Cruz-Cayapan, Charisma Victoria, Abdullah, Mardina, Mat Daud, Noridawaty, Minh, Le Huy, Floury, Nicolas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Biodegradation; Biomass; Dynamics; Earth; Earth orbit; Earth orbits; Earth rotation; Equatorial ionospheric anomaly (EIA); Equatorial regions; Faraday effect; Forests; Global navigation satellite system; Gradients; Ground stations; Image quality; Imaging techniques; Instruments; Ionosphere; ionospheric climatology; ionospheric impact on synthetic aperture radar (SAR); Ionospheric propagation; Irregularities; Low earth orbits; Magnetosphere; Monitoring instruments; Monitoring systems; Morphology; Navigation; Navigation satellites; Plasmas; Radar polarimetry; Receivers; Regional analysis; SAR (radar); Satellites; Spacecraft; Synthetic aperture radar; Total Electron Content; total electron content (TEC) gradients; Traveling ionospheric disturbances; Tropical climate; Tropical environment; Tropical environments

Biomass is a spaceborn polarimetric P-band (435 MHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in a dawn-dusk low Earth orbit. Its principal objective is to measure biomass content and change in all the Earth's forests. The ionosphere introduces the Faraday rotation on every pulse emitted by low-frequency...