Polarization properties of the GPS signal scattered off a wind-driven ocean

A global positioning system (GPS) transmitter-receiver pair form a bistatic radar for ocean remote sensing when the receiving platform carries a downlooking antenna capable of collecting the GPS signal scattered off the ocean surface. The aggregate GPS signal scattered by the ocean and received in a general bistatic configuration has been calculated for representative geometries and a variety of wind speeds and directions, using the integral equation method (IEM) combined with a realistic ocean correlation function (spectrum). The role of polarization of the reflected signal is investigated and its dependence on wind speed and direction is analyzed to assess its suitability as a detector of the wind vector. The complexity of the scattering calculations is handled by an efficient integration scheme based on combining Gaussian quadrature with a local interpolation of the surface correlation function. Additionally, since a large number of scattering contributions are required the code has been parallelized for efficiency. Some relevant features of the parallelization scheme are outlined.