Date of Award

January 2015

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

James L. Garrison

Committee Member 1

Jennifer S. Haase

Committee Member 2

Arthur E. Frazho

Committee Member 3

Michael D. Zoltowski

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) is an atmospheric sounding technique utilizing the change in propagation direction and delay of the GPS signal to measure refractivity, which provides information on temperature and humidity. The GPS-RO technique is now operational on several Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellite missions. Nevertheless, when observing localized transient events, such as tropical storms, current LEO satellite systems cannot provide sufficiently high temporal and spatial resolution soundings. An airborne RO (ARO) system has therefore been developed for localized GPS-RO campaigns. The open-loop (OL) tracking in post-processing is used to cross-correlates the received Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal with an internally generated local carrier signal predicted from a Doppler model and extract the atmospheric refractivity information. OL tracking also allows robust processing of rising GPS signals using backward tracking, which will double the observed occultation event numbers.

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