Soil moisture estimation based on BeiDou B1 interference signal analysis

BeiDou Navigation Satellite System reflectometry (BDS-R) is an emerging area of BD (BeiDou) applications that uses multipath reflected signals in microwave remote sensing. Soil moisture estimation is one of the potential important applications of BDS-R. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of soil moisture estimation based on BD B1 band interference signals, which are composed of direct and reflected BD signals and can be readily captured using low-cost commercial BDS receivers. In this paper, a theoretical background for soil estimation from interference signals was introduced, and an analysis of field experimental data was conducted. First, a cosine model for the interference signal power was built, and a non-uniform power spectrum analysis was performed on the received interference signals to determine its main frequency. Then, a least squares curve fitting was applied on the interference signal power to extract its phase. The relationship between the soil moisture and the phase was then determined. Two months of experimental data were collected at BaoXie, Wuhan and analyzed for further inversion. Experimental results show that the phase of the interference signals increases with the increase of soil moisture. The correlation coefficient between the phase and the in-situ soil moisture value is approximately 0.8. Finally, the relationship between the phase and soil moisture is employed to estimate soil moisture. Results show that using BDS-R to measure soil moisture is feasible, which demonstrates a great potential of new application of the BD system.