Radio Occultation Signal Analysis: ACE-Scientific Support Study

ACE-Scientific Support Study
Radio Occultation Signal Analysis
Per Høeg, Arne Skov Jensen, Alan Steen Nielsen

Martin Lohmann, Thomas M. Schrøder
Jacob Grove-Rasmussen, Georg B. Larsen
Atmosphere Ionosphere Research Division

Danish Meteorological Institute
Lyngbyvej 100
DK-2100, Copenhagen, Denmark
January 3, 2002
ESTEC Contract No. 14809/00/NL/MM

Deliverable WP6300(1)
Content
1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 3
2 Physical model of the radio occultation signal ........................................ 4
2.1 Characteristics of the Doppler signal: Scintillations and multipath ......... 5
3 Error analysis in the reconstruction of the refractive index ................... 9
4 Optimal estimation of the occultation parameters................................. 12
4.1 Preprocessing of narrow-banded signals with additive white noise. .... 13
4.2 Models for estimation of the impact parameter .................................... 14
4.2.1 Signal processing with a phase detector. ..................................... 15
4.2.2 Maximum likelihood estimation of the Doppler frequencies .......... 16
4.2.3 Global measurement of the occultation parameters ..................... 19
4.3 Comparison of results and numerical computation .............................. 24
4.4 Signal processing conclusion............................................................... 26
5 Appendices................................................................................................ 28
5.1 Appendix I: Band pass filtered noise.................................................... 28
5.2 Appendix II: Intrinsic phase and frequency noise................................. 29
5.3 Appendix III: Maximum likelihood parameter estimation ...................... 30
5.3.1 The Fisher information .................................................................. 33
5.4 Appendix IV: Fourier transformation of the radio occultation signal ..... 34
5.4.1 Verification of assumptions ........................................................... 36
6 References................................................................................................. 37
ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

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1 Introduction
This report is deliverable WP6300(1) and covers the work outlined in the work-
packages WP6300 and WP6500. The main issues here are analyses of the sig-
nal processing possibilities for radio occultation signals, development of signal
processing algorithms, characterisation of the signal type, and error analyses.
These tasks are all connected and constitutes a complex survey of signal proc-
essing of radio occultation. Essential aspects of signal processing are covered in
the report including the traditional phase locked loop, time sliding Fourier analy-
ses and a new method based on a Fourier transform of the total radio occultation
signal.
The basics for a development of a signal processing method are the physical
model of the signal to be processed. The physical model of the radio occultation
signal is discussed in Sec. 2 together with considerations about what validity
simulations have in the real world. An essential problem here, is that recordings
of real signal hardly exist, which mean that the models based on physical theory
can not, or have not, been rigorously compared with the real world. Another as-
pect of these problems is addressed in Sec. 2.1. Here, an attempt to characterise
the structure(s) of the Doppler signal is made, when the atmosphere is in various
states. The problems, which emerge, are that a lot of non-ideal conditions pro-
duce Doppler signals with the same structure as the signals from an ideal atmos-
pheric, and only the ideal situation can give a correct reconstruction of the refrac-
tive index profile. This means that an accuracy of an occultation measurement
has an additional uncertainty, which only can be given as a statistical value. This
value has to be determined from a statistical knowledge of atmospheric condi-
tions.
An analytic error analyse of the inversion of the bending angle to the refractive
index is performed in Sec. 3. This development is a useful tool for analysing how
an error in the Doppler frequency or impact parameter propagates in the Abel
transform. It is demonstrated how gradients in the refractive index can amplify
small uncertainties in the impact parameter. This can also be used to a general
error analyse of occultation measurements if a statistical database of refractive
index features is available.
In the main part of this report (Sec. 4) optimal estimation of the occultation pa-
rameter is considered. The phase locked loop and the time sliding Fourier
method are analysed and compared. Both methods have their advantages, but
the phase locked loop fails when the signal exhibits multipath. Another, and more
advanced method is described. The basic idea in this method is to use the path
traversed by the LEO satellite as a synthetic antenna and the fact that the Dop-

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pler frequency is a monotonic function of time (at least when the refractive index
of the atmosphere is spherical symmetric). The large synthetic aperture gives a
high resolution in the vertical direction. The method is simple to implement even
onboard the receiving satellite. It simply consists of a Fourier transform of the
total signal and a differentiation of the Fourier phase with respect to frequency.
The later can be shown to be proportional to time, which together with the actual
frequency gives the Doppler frequency as function of time. An example of an
occultation measurement with multipath is shown in Sec. 4.2.3.
The general philosophy used in this document is an attempt to make the occulta-
tion measurement conceptual and operative simple despite the complex nature of
the measurement method. A full operative simulator, which can perform a 3D
wave propagation in an arbitrary medium, detect the Doppler frequency and con-
struct the bending angle, is a serious challenge. The time for a single run on a
computer will be long and if a full Monte Carlo analysis has to be done, the com-
puting time would be extremely time consuming. Instead a description based on
a careful error analyses and general understanding of the physic of the problem
is preferable.
2 Physical model of the radio occultation signal

The physical models for the measurements are the propagation of the radio
waves through the refractive index medium, which is assumed to spherical sym-
metric with respect to the centre of the Earth. The simplest model describes the
propagation which, in terms of geometrical optic (the GO method) and others
(Fresnel transform, back propagation) tries to include diffraction effects into the
description of the received electromagnetic field. Diffraction effects are usually
important close to edges and surfaces, which can be considered as discontinui-
ties or very large gradients in the medium. If these effects are present in the at-
mosphere the propagating electromagnetic field must be evaluated from the ba-
sic Maxwell equations. But in this case the spherical symmetry condition for the
refractive index cannot be fulfilled for the whole path of propagation. Non-
symmetrical refractive index can in principle also be treated as a geometrical op-
tical problem, but according to the authors no methods exit at present. In geomet-
rical optics the electromagnetic energy is propagating along a path, forming a ray
determined by the principle of Fermat. In terms of diffraction, the ray is the cen-
troid of the beam traversing from the transmitter to the receiver. The defocusing
or concentration of the rays, which also can be found from geometrical optical
consideration, gives the spread of the beam. It is therefore doubtful that the in-
corporation of diffractive effect in itself can improve the physical model, but by
taking the total field into account from the synthetic antenna formed by the mov-
ing receiver satellite, improvement in the vertical resolution can be expected.

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The diffracting correction models cannot describe the full-diffracted field, but in-
clude a physical approximation of the effect of the refractive index (phase
screens). Their validity are verified though simulation and compared with the re-
sults from the GO method.
Philosophically the value of simulations can be difficult to evaluate. Using the fol-
lowing model for a simulation;
Input ⇒ Physical ⇒ Signal ⇒ Output
model processing
⇑ ⇓
⇐ Reconstruction ⇐
It can be argued that, If the reconstruction of the output resemblance the input
does it mean that the physical model is correct, or does it mean that the signal
processing is optimal for the physical model? The last must be the correct inter-
pretation. The only way to verify a physical model is to compare real signal with
simulated signal from the physical model. Since only incomplete real data for oc-
cultation measurements exists, it can be difficult to choose the most accurate
physical model. In the conclusion of this report it is stated that an incorporation of
a scientific mode in the LEO satellite, which can produces real signal with a rela-
tive large bandwidth, would be most wanted in order to resolve this question and
other signal processing issues.
The physical model chosen here for the estimation of the signal parameters is the
geometrical optical model. It describes all relevant phenomena such as
singlepath, multipath and critical refraction. The geometrical set-up used (Sec. 6)
in this report, is throughout a configuration where the GPS, the LEO satellites
and the centre of the Earth are in the same plane during all the occultation
measurement. Further it is assumed that the satellites are moving in circles. For
an operative use of the results derived in this report corrections to real satellite
geometry must be made. Numerical examples make use of the values stated in
Table 1 and 2 in Sec. 4.3.
2.1 Characteristics of the Doppler signal: Scintillations and multi-

path
The condition for a reliable reconstruction of the refractive index and thereby
temperature and pressure, are besides measurement errors, that the atmosphere
is stationary and the refractive index is spherical symmetric. These assumptions
are probably never fulfilled exactly in a real atmosphere. The questions are then,
how close we are to the ideal atmosphere, what impact the derivations have on

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the accuracy of the meteorological parameters, and how and if, this can be pre-
dicted during a measurement.
The refractive index from a spherical symmetric atmosphere can cause multipath
rays. The multipath does not prevent a perfect inversion obtained from the Abel
transform, unless critical refraction occurs (see Sec. 6). Multipath does, however
occur within a non-spherical symmetrical atmosphere and also when the atmos-
phere is non-stationary. Signal caused by scintillation in the atmosphere can
look very much alike multipath, and must, if possible be removed from the signal
before the refractive index can be recovered. The effects of strong scintillations
can only be described using a full wave solution of the Maxwell equations,
whereas weak scintillations can be described with the thin phase screen ap-
proximation. The latter approximation will in the following be used to give a
physical description of the appearance of the occultation signal.
The concept of a thin phase screen comes from geometrical optics and can be
used to describe diffractive effects from local perturbation in a refractive medium.
A thin phase screen is a phase variation in a plane passed by the electromag-
netic field. The phase is given by the integrated perturbation of the refractive in-
dex projected down of the screen. With this, the ordinary ray pattern can be cal-
culated from the unperturbed medium after which the effect of the phase screen
can be taken into account. The structure of the unperturbed ray pattern is then
unchanged whereas the amplitude and the phase of the single rays are affected
by the perturbation in the refractive index. If the phase screen is a grating the
resulting complex field is a sum of modes which match the direction of the unper-
turbed ray, which means that the received intensity of a single ray will exhibit os-
cillation and looks like the intensity variations of multipath. This multiplicative ef-
fect from the refractive index perturbation on single ray field is interpreted as
scintillations.
In this report we will focus on the possibilities, if any, of predicting the conditions
of the non-ideal atmosphere from an analyses of the received signals. If this pre-
diction can be done, a figure of merit can be associated with actual measure-
ments. This is valuable when data are to be assimilated into weather forecast
models.
Case 1. Stationary, spherical symmetry

The ideal picture of an occultation is a stationary field of rays in the atmosphere
emerging from the GPS satellite (neglecting the movement of the GPS). This
path is detected by the moving LEO satellite. The electromagnetic field of single
rays or multiple rays are here detected depending on the local ray field structure.
The intensity of single rays is slowly varying and faster for multipath rays. The
latter effect is due to interference between the rays. The Doppler frequency will
be a monotonic function of time due to the movement of the satellite.

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Case 2. Stationary, vertical perturbed spherical symmetry

If the ideal picture is sustained, but with a non-spherical vertical perturbation in
the refractive index, the general picture is the same, i.e. the signal patterns can-
not be distinguish from the cases described in case 1. The vertical disturbance
can be considered as thin phase screen inserted along an Earth radius. The
presence of phase screen can cause several effects depending on the nature of
the phase. For slow monotonic spatial phase change the effect of the phase
screen it to first order that of a prism and to second order that of lens. If the
phase exhibits spatial oscillations the phase screen is equivalent to a grating.
1) The effect of a prism: The ray pattern seen by the LEO satellite is bend so
they seem to appear from a virtual shifted GPS transmitter in a direction per-
pendicular to line of sight between the satellites. This means that the impact
parameter is different at the GPS and the LEO satellite. The difference be-
tween the impact parameters is to first order constant and will act as an un-
known bias (see Sec. 4).
2) The lens effect: The ray pattern will seems to come from the GPS satellite
shifted in the direction of the line of sight. Again, it must be expected that the
impact parameters are different at the receiver and transmitter.
3) The effect of a grating: At the phase screen the directions of the incoming
rays are split into an un-shifted zero order ray, two symmetrical shifted first
order rays, and possibly also higher order modes. The grating effect is very
different form the prism and lens effect; the same Doppler frequency will ap-
pear several times, and could be denoted as frequency multipaths.
Since 1) and 2) cannot be distinguished from the ideal case (Case 1), it is impor-
tant to analyse the statistical nature of the vertical perturbation and to get an es-
timate of the bias of the impact parameter. If the vertical perturbations are pre-
sent at several places, along the optical path, these effects can be enhanced or
averaged out depending on the structure of the perturbations.
In the case of a grating there is a possibility to discriminate between the multiple

appearances of the Doppler frequencies by only accepting that with the largest
amplitude, since it must be expected that the energy in the higher order modes
from the grating are small. If this is possible, and a single grating is the only dis-
turbances, the ideal case could be recovered.
Case 3. Stationary, horizontal perturbed spherical symmetry

If the spherical symmetry is perturbed horizontal perpendicular to the ordinary ray
paths, signal arriving at different times can have the same Doppler frequency.

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Since out-off plane occultation is unlikely or very rare this will not be considered
as a problem.
Non-stationary conditions
A non-stationary atmosphere means that the refractive index is changing during
an occultation. Introducing the sampling rate ∆f s , the measuring time T and the
time scale of the atmospheric changes τ , their distinctive cases can be consid-
ered:
a) τ ≤ 1 The changes are faster than the sampling time.
∆f
b) 1 ≤ τ ≤ T The time changes are between the sampling time and

∆f
the measuring time.
c) τ ≥ T The time changes are slower than the measuring time.
In a) the condition depends on the nature of the time changes. Most likely the
time changes are fast fluctuations in the atmosphere with short temporal and
spatial coherence, and the received intensity will exhibit scintillations. If a sliding
Fourier transform in a short time window is performed, it should be possible to
extract the unperturbed Doppler frequency as function of time, due to the as-
sumption of fast fluctuations of the refractive index. If the atmosphere really is
changing (no fluctuations), which is unlikely, the occultation measurements can-
not be used to reconstruct the refractive index.
In b) the conditions are more complicated. If the whole atmosphere is changing

monotonically, the reconstruction of the refractive index will have a bias, which
cannot be compensated for. Scintillations will give frequency multipath and pos-
sible signal fading. Combined with temporal multipath the detection of the Dop-
pler frequency will not be reliable.
In c) the atmosphere can be considered, as stationary and the measuring condi-

tion are as described in the stationary case above.
Some of the cases described above can be detected by analysing the received
signal, while others are not identifiable. This means, that even if an actual occul-
tation measurement looks correct, the reconstructed refractive index could have
a serious bias. This lead to a figure-of-merit assignment to actual measurements
based on feature analysis of a real refractive index.

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3 Error analysis in the reconstruction of the refractive index
The reconstruction of the refractive index from the radio occultation measure-
ments is a chain of steps where errors are propagated into the final reconstruc-
tion. These issues have been described by [Kursinski et. al., 1997] and [Synder-
gaard, 1999] in very comprehensive studies. Here we will only use a simplistic
approach, which shows the essential features of the problem and support the
signal processing analysis outlined below.
The noise and uncertainties for the detection of the impact parameter a , is de-
noted ê which is supposed to be a sum of various contribution, thermal noise in
the receiver, processing uncertainties, numerical errors and so on. This yields:
eˆ = ∑ ∆aˆ q (1)
The single contributions are depending on the specific processing methods ap-
plied through the whole chain. Each term, ∆âq can correlated with other terms
and be biased, or what is equivalent, having a non-zero mean value. A bias is in
general unwanted and should be avoided if possible, i.e. numerical computation
should be done with random samples and processing methods with an intrinsic
bias should be considered with care.
The measurement of the impact parameter at a certain time, gives the bending
angle as function of the impact parameter. The bending angle is then Abel trans-
formed giving the logarithm to the refractive index as expressed below.
∞
1 α ( x)
ln(n) = Aˆ (α ) = ∫ dx (2)
π a (x 2 − a 2
In α (a) each value of a has an uncertainty of eˆ(a) . If the true value of a is de-
noted a~ the bending angle and its related error eˆ(a ~) , can be expressed as:
~) dα
~) + eˆ(a (3)
α (a) = α (a ~
da
This will generate the expression for the measured and the true value of the loga-
rithm to the refractive index:
~ 1
∞
1 dα (4)
ln(n) = ln(n ) + ∫ eˆ( x )dx
π a ( x 2 − a 2 dx
where n~ denotes the true value of the refractive index.
From the integral above, the mean value and the variance or the statistics of the
refractive index can be found. The integrals cannot in general be expressed ex-
plicit for operative use. However, an asymptotic expansion in 1/ a can be ob-

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tained by integration by parts, in all cases. Here we will show the result of the
expansion for the stochastic expression Eq. 4, and then compute mean values
and variance from the approximated expression. In order to do this an expression
for the derivative of the bending must be known. Otherwise, the technique is
similar as for evaluating the Abel transform of the bending angle for the other rep-
resentations of the errors. The uncertainty of the logarithm to the refractive index
yields to first order in 1/ a :
d ln(nˆ ) 1 deˆ(a) (5)
∆ ln(n) ≅ 2eˆ(a) + (eˆ(a) − a ) ln(nˆ ) + ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅
da a da
By averaging the relative bias it can be written as:

∆ ln(n) < eˆ(a) > ~)
2a d ln(n
≅ (1 + )
ln(n~) a ~) da
ln(n
 < eˆ(a) > dn~

~)
d (n  for r << 1 (6)
r a dr
< eˆ(a) > 2 
= (1 + dr ) ≈
~) ~ 
a ln(n dn  2 < eˆ(a) >
n+r dn~
dr  for r >> 1
 a ln(nˆ ) dr
It is seen that the bias of the impact parameter gives a bias on refractive index
and that the bias depend on the gradient of the refractive index. The condition in
Eq.6 for small gradient is fulfilled for a simple exponential decaying refractive in-
dex typical for the atmosphere, which means that only in special cases the area
of large gradients comes into effect.
In cases where the gradients are small (in the sense defined above) small bias
terms in the impact parameter will not affect the measurement of the refractive
index, whereas in cases with large gradients the induced bias on the refractive
index can be large, especially in the upper part of the atmosphere. At the surface
of the Earth a ≈ 6200 km and ln(n) ≈ 2.5 ⋅ 10 −4 which means that the product
a ln(n) ≈ 1.5 km . An allowable bias in the impact parameter should therefore be
smaller than 10m (if the relative bias as a goal should be smaller than 1%). The
10m is equivalent to a relative bias on the impact parameter of 10 −4 . At higher
altitudes the refractive index falls of exponentially and the demand on the bias
becomes critical.

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The relative variance yields:
( ∆ ln(n)) 2 4 d ln(nˆ ) 2 1 4 d ln(nˆ )
< 2
>≅< (eˆ(a)) 2 > ( 2
( ) + 2 + )
(ln(n)) (ln(n)) da a ln(n) da
(7)
d 2 c(a1 − a 2 )
+
da1da2 a =a
1 2 =a
The impact of the first term for the variance is similar to the analysis performed
above for the bias term. The second term in Eq. 7 involves the second order de-
rivative of the correlation function of the error function. The correlation function
can depend explicitly on the impact parameter, but in general, it will depend ex-
plicitly on time and implicit on the impact parameter. For the part of the error
function which depend explicit on time we can write the second order derivative
as:
d 2 c(a1 − a 2 ) d 2c da
= ( ) −2 (8)
da1da2 a =a =a
dt 1dt 2 t =t =t dt
1 2 1 2
c(0) 1 1 dα 2 < (eˆ(a)) 2 >

=− ( + − ) =
(Ωτ ) 2 D1 D2 da l2
where τ is the correlation time for the process (in the case of thermal noise τ is
one over the noise-bandwidth). Ω = θ is the angular velocity between the pair of
satellites. da dt can be found from the angular equation α = θ + ψ 2 − ψ1 which
gives the defocusing factor 1 D1 + 1 D 2 − dα da . The correlation length l from
the equation above yields:
Ωτ
l= (9)
1 1 dα
+ −
D1 D 2 da
It is seen that large gradient in the bending angle causes the correlation length to
go to zero and consequently induce a large errors in the reconstructed refractive
index. If the gradient of the bending angle is small it can be estimated that the
correlation length is in the range of 500m − 100m in the case of usual GPS/LEO
parameter. This is a low number and demands an accuracy of meters for the im-
pact parameter if the reconstruction of the refractive index should be accurate.
The present analysis is concerned about the point accuracy for the reconstruction
of the refractive index. If the relative variance at a point is large it will be difficult
to get a reliable result in the specific point, but by averaging over several points it
is possible to obtain a good estimate but with the cost of larger spatial resolution.
This calls for a reconstruction where the spatial resolution is varying.

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4 Optimal estimation of the occultation parameters
Optimal estimation of signal parameters demands a parametric model of the sig-
nal and knowledge about the statistics of the signal. The optimality of an estima-
tor should always be seen in the light of what is optimized. In the case of maxi-
mum likelihood estimation the probability function of the signal is maximized with
respect to the set of parameters. For the least square method the cost function
has to be minimized. The least square method is identical to the maximum likeli-
hood method in the case where the statistics of the signal is Gaussian.
All estimation methods should in principle be comparable by a common figure of

merit, which ideal should be a measure of the information gain obtained by the
estimation process. But this is, as a rule, not operative because of calculation
problems. Other measures are the variance/signal to noise ratio or the Fisher
information obtained from the maximum likelihood estimation method. The mean-
ing of the Fisher information is usual interpreted by using the CramÚr-Rao ine-
quality to compare it with the variance, i.e. by using the variance as the figure of
merit. The variance is for some processes well defined (Gaussian statistics) but
in other cases as for instance statistics with Lorentz distributions, the variance is
not defined. In general the variance is a conservative quality measure whereas
the Fisher information is closer related to the information gain. In cases where
the estimated parameter is a peak value, the Fisher information is given by the
reciprocal radius of curvature, which is physical meaningful. Now, this discussion,
together with the various ways to formulate the estimation problem shows that
estimation has subjective elements.
In the case of radio occultation the signal is narrow-banded and consists of a

slowly varying amplitude, a carrier frequency and a phase given by the path of
occultation. Both the phase and amplitude contains information about the impact
parameter but the phase is the most sensitive. The noise is usual modeled as
additive white noise coming from electronic noise in the detection process. Signal
related noise due to random scintillations in the refractive index along the ray
path is usual not taken into account, and can mostly be considered to be non-
existing due to the long path of spatial integration. In special cases conditions in
the ionosphere can cause scintillations probably due to fast vertical changes in
the electron density in the ionosphere. However, multipath rays will cause signal
structures, which are difficult to distinguish from scintillations and signal fading.
In the following the signal processing will be analyzed. First preprocessing is

considered briefly, and second, various methods for parameter estimation are
discussed and sought evaluated. The costs of processing, time, computer power,
and the receiving hardware at the satellite are not the issues here.

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4.1 Preprocessing of narrow-banded signals with additive white
noise.
e iqt
1 Q(t )e − i (qt '+φ(t ' ) − qt ' ) + n

Q (t )Cos (qt + φ (t )) + n (t ) 4
Band Low
pass Mixer pass
Figure 1.
General scheme for pre-processing a narrow-banded signal with additive white noise.
A narrow-banded signal can be described by the function:

U (t ) = Q(t ) cos(qt + φ(t )) + n(t )
where Q(t ) is a slowly varying signal, q the angular carrier frequency and φ(t ) is
a phase term. The noise term n(t ) is usually described as white noise, i.e. uncor-
related and active at all frequencies. If pre-knowledge about the carrier frequency
exists and the bandwidth of the signal is known approximately the following pro-
cedure is applied as illustrated in figure 1:
1. The received signal U (t ) is band pass filtered in order to reduce the addi-
tive noise as much as possible, i.e. the band pass should be as narrow as
possible without disturbing the useful information in the received signal.
2. The band pass filtered signal is feed into a complex mixer where it is mul-
tiplied with a phasor oscillating with frequency q , close to the centre fre-
quency of the received signal.
3. The complex output from the mixer is low passed filtered so that only fre-
quencies in order of the bandwidth of the signal survive. The low pass of
the mixed noise signal further reduces the residual noise from the band
pass.

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Now, this produce the raw signal, that further can be processed with the purpose
of finding the phase, amplitude and the frequency spectrum or performing a pa-
rametric match. The band pass filtered noise is described in Appendix I.
4.2 Models for estimation of the impact parameter
Different methods for extracting the impact parameter can be applied on the radio
occultation signal. The measurement of the impact parameter and the knowledge
of the GPS and the LEO satellite position is the basis for the reconstruction of the
refractive index.
The processing methods can be divided into three generic groups:
1. Instantaneous measurements. Tracking devices such as the phased

locked loop, zero counting, frequency locked loop.
2. Local measurements. Measurement, which involves a group of data

points. Spectral analysis, least square fit, maximum likelihood estimation
and Karhunen-Loève feature extraction (MUSIC [Schmidt, 1986]), Radio-
Optics [Lindal et al., 1987], [Gorbunov, 2001], belong to this class.
3. Global measurements. This include transformation of the group of occul-

tations, correcting for diffractions effects and using the effect of the syn-
thetic antenna formed by the moving detector. Back-propagation [Gor-
bunov et al., 1996], Fresnel diffraction theory [Mortensen and Høeg,
1998] and canonical transform [Gorbunov, 2001].
Measurement errors are of various origins. Clock errors that affect the accuracy
of the satellite positions, signal detection noise and errors or uncertainties from
the processing methods are among the most important. Detection noise and
processing uncertainties will here be considered in the selected processing
method. Both sources of errors give an uncertainty in the impact parameter and
the added effect of errors gives errors in the reconstruction of the refractive in-
dex, as described in Sec. 4.

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4.2.1 Signal processing with a phase detector.
The raw signal is processed by a phase locked loop (PLL) (this is usually in-
cluded in the mixer). The phase and time derivatives of the phase can then be
measured, averaged and recorded with a certain sampling frequency f s . If the
bandwidth of the signal is ∆f , it can be averaged in a time 1 / 2∆f without signifi-
cant loss of relevant information and with a reduction of noise before the phase is
differentiated.
The conditions for the PLL to function properly are that the amplitude of the sig-
nal and the signal to noise ratio is of a certain magnitude and that the bandwidth
of the PLL is much lager than the bandwidth of the signal. The latter can easily
be fulfilled if the bandwidth of the signal is known, but if not, bias problems and
unattended averaging of the signal will occur and erroneous results will be pro-
duced.
In the case where the signal amplitude is small (and the S/N ratio likewise is re-
duced) the PLL will have difficulties to catch the correct phase within a time
smaller than 1 / ∆f and again bias errors and erroneous result will be produced.
In general the PLL technique is a very robust signal processing method for sig-
nals with small bandwidth, but it demand a high degree of pre-knowledge of the
signal. The high degree of pre-knowledge demanded for the PLL to work prop-
erly, is a serious disadvantage, when the signals, coming from certain areas in
the lower part of the atmosphere, are fading and changing drastically. Strategies
for deciding a ‘go or no-go’ signal processing can be difficult to state for the PLL.
Furthermore, detailed information of the signal, such as actual bandwidth and
spectral form cannot be obtained with a PLL.
In the case of multipath the receiver gets a superposition of signals with different
phases and the PLL will detect a phase, which is a mixture of the incoming
phases. This will give an error in the estimation of the impact parameter. The
best way to avoid this is to reconstruct the complex signal and use methods that
can cope with multipath. The complex signal can be reconstructed if the PLL has
the proper working conditions according to the remarks above.
4.2.1.1 Phase detection and noise

In Appendix II, the equations for the phase detection of a narrow banded signal
with additive white noise (see Appendix II, Eq. II.3) is elaborated. The error
analysis assumes that the PLL is working in an ideal way. It is shown that the

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power of the noise is proportional to the bandwidth of the pre-processing filtering
process. Ideally, this could be the signal bandwidth and the actual signalling
processing should approximate this. The relative detection frequency error can
be estimated from Eq. II.6 and II.7 in Appendix II. It yields:
2E ∆f 1 Q 2E0 ∆f
∆ωD ≈ 2 0 φD ± φD 2 + ∆ω 2 2 (1)
Q + 2E0 ∆f 6 Q + 2E0 ∆f
where ∆ωD is the Doppler frequency error, 2E0 ∆f the total noise power after
the band pass filtering, and ∆ω the angular frequency bandwidth. Q denotes the
amplitude of the signal. φD is the excess frequency, and is defined as the differ-
ence between the Doppler frequencies for the perturbed path and the not per-
turbed path, but it could also be defined as the present Doppler frequency minus
the previous measured Doppler frequency.
4.2.2 Maximum likelihood estimation of the Doppler frequencies
A common method for parametrical estimation is the maximum likelihood estima-

tion method (MLE). In this, the statistics of the signal is supposed to be known
and the explicit dependence of the sets of parameters to be estimated. The
maximum likelihood method is simple to apply if the stochastic variables are sta-
tistical independent, and if not, the method will only be operative in special cases.
If the statistics is Gaussian and independent, the maximum likelihood is equiva-
lent to a least square estimation. In this method, where the signal includes an
additive band pass filtered white noise, the statistics is not fully independent as
seen in Appendix I. However, the noise correlation function (see Appendix I, Eq.
I.3) is decaying very fast when the time distance increases.
In Appendix III the MLE is applied on the present problem with multipath radio
occultation signals embedded in additive white noise. It is shown that the MLE
estimation is bias free and that the optimal signal processing method is equiva-
lent to a spectral analysis. The estimated values of the Doppler frequencies (or
rather the excess frequencies) are found by detecting the position of the peaks in
the spectrum.
The radio occultation multipath signal is described in Eq. 1 in Sec. 2. The main
results from the MLE analysis described in Appendix III are the computation of
the Fisher information, which produces the uncertainties for the unknown signal
parameters, the amplitude Q l , the phase φ l and the Doppler frequency (ω D ) l for
the l th optical path of a ray. The uncertainties yield:

16/38
2E 0 ∆f
< ( ∆Ql ) 2 >=
N
2E 0 ∆f
< ( ∆φ l ) 2 >= (1)
NQl2
24E 0 ∆f
< ( ∆φ l ) 2 >=< (∆ω D,l ) 2 >=
T 2 NQl2
where ∆f is the bandwidth of the band pass filtered radio signal or the sample
rate, T the length of the time window for the spectrum of the signal, and N = T∆f
the time-bandwidth product for the signal processing. It is seen that all the uncer-
tainties are independent of the band-pass magnitude ∆f , i.e. an increase in the
filtered bandwidth does not change the uncertainties. This is in contrast to the
operation of the PLL where an increase in ∆f also increases the detection uncer-
tainty.
Now, the MLE estimation has been done under certain constrains which shall be
evaluated in details. The instantaneous Doppler frequency is defined as the time
derivative of the phase, and the MLE spectrum analysis is using data in a time
window T which means that the Doppler frequency or the impact parameter is
determined with a time uncertainty of T . The parameter set (a(t ), θ(t )) , where
θ(t ) is the angle between the GPS and the LEO satellite, gives the bending angle
α as function of the impact parameter a , from which the refractive index can be
reconstructed by the Abel transform. If the spectral analysis is done with a sliding
time window the bending angle can be sampled with the actual sampling rate or
lower.
In the following the frequency and time resolution is discussed.
4.2.2.1 Discussion of time and frequency resolution

In order to get a high frequency resolution, it is favourable that the time window is
as large as possible, which contradict the wish for high time resolution for the
measurement of (a(t ), θ(t )) . This reflects the classical uncertainty relation be-
tween frequency and time. However, the processing uncertainty in the Doppler
frequency (Eq. 1) can be smaller than the frequency uncertainty 1 T , which
means that the resolution in the spectrum can be enhanced to the limit of the
processing uncertainty, i.e. the resolution can be increased by using interpola-
tion. A simple way to do this is to use the zero filling technique. Calculating the
ratio M = ∆f ∆f D , where ∆f D is the Doppler frequency uncertainty, the number of
zeros which can be added to the sampled signal is then M − N . Operationally,
this can be done by a crude estimate of the S N ratio at normal conditions:
Whatever the Doppler frequency uncertainty is, the zero filling technique will

17/38
smooth the spectrum and ease the detection of the peak positions, and besides,
multipath can be resolved better. The sub-resolution technique will produce an
accurate frequency estimate but we still don’t know at what time it was meas-
ured. In the following we will attempt to optimise the time window so the time un-
certainty is minimized.
If the Doppler frequency changes during a measurement, i.e. in the time win-
dowT , the MLE spectrum analysis cannot be applied. The constraint on the time
window for a proper use of the MLE method is derived in Appendix III and yields
DD l . If the frequency resolution in the spectrum effectively
T < τ l with τ l = 2π φ
should reach the MLE uncertainty ∆ω D , the constraint on the time window has to
be sharpened. In the time widow the Doppler frequency can increase an amount
of ∆φD ≅ T 2 φ
DD , which should be smaller than or equal to the noise frequency un-
certainty ∆ω D . This is equivalent to the constrain: π T ∆ω D < τ l2 which can be
converted to a constrain for the time window:
τ 2 2 24E 1
T ≤ T0 = ( l ) 5 ( 2 0 ) 5 ,
π Ql
with the corresponding Doppler uncertainty: (2)
τ l2 − 35 24E 0 25
∆ω D = ( ) ( 2 ) .
π Ql
In the optimal time window a reasonable number of samples have to be used for
the Fourier transform if the theoretical limit of the noise induced frequency uncer-
tainty has to be reached. The number of samples is given by the time-bandwidth
product, which yields:
τ l2 52 24E 0 51
T0 ∆f = ∆f ( ) ( 2 ) (3)
π Ql
For τ l ≈ .3 sec (see Table 1 in Sec. 3.3), ∆f = 50Hz , and a signal to noise ratio of
30 dB, the time-bandwidth product is in the range of 1, first with a increase in the
value of the bandwidth to ∆f = 1000Hz will give a two-digit number for the time-
bandwidth product. Lager value of τ l , which occurs in multipath areas, will also
improve the time-bandwidth product.
To conclude this discussion it is seen that spectrum analysis can be operated in

two distinct modes:
• A mode where the Doppler uncertainty is limited by noise

• A mode where the Doppler uncertainty is limited by the reciprocal time
window

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In practice a real operation is a mixture of the two modes. The noise-limited
mode is the most favourable for reasonable signal to noise ratio but demands a
high sampling rate.
4.2.3 Global measurement of the occultation parameters

In the previous sections an instantaneous (PLL) and a local (MLE) measuring
method have been described. The local methods have limited vertical resolution
due to the small extend of the effective receiving aperture. If the whole path trav-
ersed by the LEO satellite is considered to be one antenna there should be pos-
sibilities for a much better vertical resolution. The success of synthetic aperture
radar relies on the fact that a poor spatial resolution from a point antenna can be
converted into a high-resolution device by scanning the point antenna over a
large area. The position of the LEO satellite is known, and time and space are
interchangeable, so the spatial distribution of the electromagnetic fields on the
whole antenna can be analysed in time, for instance by Fourier transforming the
total signal from the first measurement at t = t 0 to the last at t = t 0 + T . Since
T is large ≈ 100-200 sec., the frequency- or the impact parameter resolution will
be very high. Multipath rays will not be a problem since the Fourier transform
separates the multipath ray into single rays.
With the conventional conception of the Fourier transform all time information
disappear. However, the Fourier transform can also be used as a mapping
method where, for instance, the time is mapped into a frequency space. This is a
well-known technique in optical processing where it is used as coordinate trans-
formations. With some constrains this can also be done in the time domain.
In the Fourier transform of the occultation signal the frequency axis represent an
ordering of the impact parameter in increasing order. The information about the
refractive index is present in some form in the amplitude and in the phase υ , of
the Fourier transformed signal. If the information produced by the Fourier trans-
form is usable, the reconstruction of the refractive index can be done. This will
be shown in details in Appendix IV: But shortly, the result is that the frequency
ω , and the frequency derivative of the phase υ , are proportional to the impact
parameter and the time t , respectively, i.e.
dυ
(ω, ) ∝ (a(t ), t ) (1)
dω
This very simple result is obtained by Fourier transforming the nearly raw data
(the carrier frequency is supposed to be removed) from the antenna. The sam-
pling rate has in principle to be done with the Doppler frequency, but it can be
reduced by mixing the signal with an appropriate frequency that later can be used
to reconstruct the signal before the Fourier transform is done.

19/38
Figure 1a
Figure 1b
Figure 1a and 1b shows the impact parameter as function of time. The straight red line is the
calculated impact parameter for the neutral atmosphere (the refractive index is constant) as func-
tion of time. The black dotted curve shows the impact parameter versus time calculated from the
phase of the Fourier transform of the occultation signal from the neutral atmosphere. The spread
of the black dots reflects the wrapping noise in the phase. It has not been attempted to optimise
the unwrapping and differentiation of the phase.

20/38
In Appendix IV, the relation stated in Eq. 1 will be derived. The analysis is done
on one single path that do not exclude multipath, because of the ability of the
Fourier transform to separate frequencies.
The numerical approximations, which lead to Eq. 1, can partly be verified by ap-
plying the technique on an atmosphere with a constant refractive index. This is
shown in Figure 1.
The numerical results shown in Fig. 1a and 1b are obtained by Fourier transform-
ing the occultation signal from the atmosphere with a constant refractive index.
The signal yields:
1 ik ( L (t )−a(0 )Ωt )
U (t ) = e (2)
L(t )
where L(t ) is the distance between the GPS and LEO satellite, a(0) the impact
parameter at the time t = 0 , and k is the wave number. The signal U (t ) is Fou-
rier transformed and the operation described in Eq. 1 is performed. The result is
compared with the exact result a(t ) = rG r L sin(θ(t )) / L(t ) ( where θ is the angle
between the GPS and the LEO satellite, and rG , r L the GPS and LEO radii re-
spectively). It is seen that the results shown in Fig. 1a and 1b verify the mathe-
matical approximations used in order to derive Eq. 1. In the real atmosphere the
amplitude and phase have a more complicated structure than shown in Eq. 2, but
due to the arguments stated in Appendix IV this will not change the validity of
Eq.1.
A more realistic verification has been done. The data used for this simulation is a
wave propagation in the atmosphere based on the solution of the Helmholtz
wave equation. This approach applies a full wave forward scatter model that is
capable of predicting propagation for an arbitrary atmospheric refractivity. The
primary limitations of this technique are that it neglects the backscattered field,
and that accurate calculations are restricted to near-horizontal propagation direc-
tions.
The wave propagator is used on a meteorological weather predicting analysts

field (ECHAM GRIB file no. 62, Feb. 2, 1997). An occultation has been selected
so the wave propagating from the GPS satellite to the LEO satellite will enter ar-
eas in the neutral atmosphere where strong variations in the index of refraction
occur. The simulated amplitude and phase signals for the L1 wave, are calcu-
lated for the position of the LEO satellite. The resulting signal consists of the
simulated amplitude and the excess phase, i.e. the phase from the neutral at-
mosphere subtracted from the real phase. This reduces the necessary sampling
rate. The sampling rate for the simulation used here is 58 Hz.

21/38
Figure 2
The amplitude of the occultation signal as function of time.
In Fig. 2 the amplitude of the occultation signal is shown. It is seen that signs of
strong multipath (significant variations in the amplitude due interference) are pre-
sent around 23, 33 and 36 sec. Other extremes in the amplitude can be associ-
ated with variations in the defocusing factor.
Figure 3
The amplitude of the Fourier transform of the occultation signal

22/38
Now, before the signal is processed, the ‘original’ signal has to be reconstructed,
at least to a point where the bandwidth of the reconstructed signal is equal to the
original signal. This is done by a re-sampling (interpolation) of the simulated sig-
nal, and by adding the phase from the neutral atmosphere. The restored complex
signal has a bandwidth of approx. 500 Hz.
The results from a FFT of the restored signal are shown in Fig. 3. Within the
bandwidth of the signal the FFT spectrum is flat as predicted in Appendix IV, Eq.
IV.14.
The phase of the FFT is differentiated with respect to the frequency giving the
time (see Eq. 4). This is shown in Fig. 4 in blue colour. For comparison, the Dop-
pler frequency (the time derivative of the measured phase) is mapped versus
time in a red colour. It is seen that the two curves are overlapping by near areas
where multipaths are occurring.
Figure 4
The Doppler frequency versus time. The red curve shows the time differentiated phase of the
occultation signal. Around 23 seconds, it is seen that the reconstruction of the Doppler frequency
fails due to multipath. The blue curve show the frequency differentiated Fourier phase as function
of time. Besides, the multipath area the two curves have a nearly perfect match.

23/38
4.3 Comparison of results and numerical computation
In the following we will compare results for the PLL and the MLE processing
method. But first, the basic numerical assumptions for the occultation technique
geometry will be stated. The neutral atmosphere and realistic path parameter for
the GPS and LEO satellite will be used for this purpose. This is done in Table 1
and 2.
GPS-radius LEO-radius Wavelength GPS-velocity LE0-velocity

K K
rGPS = r1 rLEO = r2 λ v GPS = v GPS θ v LEO = v LEO θ
km km m km/sec km/sec
26370 7370 .2 -2 7
Relative angular velocity GPS-LEO radian/sec

v v
Ω = LEO − GPS .001
r LEO rGPS
Table 1
θ = Ωt
rad 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3
Distance GPS-LEO
L(t ) = r L2 + rG2 − 2r L rG cos(θ )
2.6 2.7 2.8 2.8 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1
10 −4 Km
Impact parameter
r r
a0 = L G sin(θ )
L
7213 7041 6814 6538 6216 5853 5455 5023 4563
Km
Doppler frequency
f D0 = kLD(t ) = kΩa0 (t )
kHz 36 35.2 34.0 32.6 31.0 29.2 27.2 25.1 22.8
Impact parameter velocity

aD 0 = − ΩL (r L − rG cos(θ ))(r L − rG cos(θ ))
m / sec -45 -63 -79 -94 -108 -119 -130 -140 -149
Time scale for the phase acceleration

τ = kΩ2πa0
sec . .37 .31 .28 .25 .24 .22 .21 .21 .20
Table 2.

24/38
In Table 2 all values are computed from the neutral atmosphere, i.e. where the
refractive index is constant. The time scales for the phase acceleration are mini-
mum values; in the real atmosphere they will always be longer especially when
gradients occur in the refractive index profile.
To compare the performance of the phase locked loop and the spectral analysis
signal processing method, bias and uncertainties for the impact parameter are
computed as function of the signal-to-noise ratio obtained from Eq. 1 Sec.
4.2.1.1. and Eq. 2 Sec. 4.2.2.1. The results are shown in Table 3. The signal to
noise ratio is here defined in the context of the phase locked loop, i.e.
2
S N =Q where Q is the signal amplitude and 2E 0 ∆f the total noise from
2E 0 ∆f
the band pass.
The comparison is not quite fair with respect to the PLL method since the results
from the MLE have been chosen from optimal values. The results have been cal-
culated for a sampling rate of ∆f = 50Hz . If the sampling rate is increased, the
PLL results become worse whereas the MLE results are unchanged. In contrast,
a decrease in the sampling rate improves the PLL result.
PLL Bias Uncertainty MLE Bias Uncertainty

∂a m ∆a m ∂a m ∆a m
S/N dB S/N
30 .3 23 30 0 11
20 3.2 72 20 0 29
10 32 229 10 0 75
3 151 511 3 0 143
Table 3.
The uncertainties for the impact parameter in Table 3 do not include clock errors.
The bias on the PLL is computed with the assumption that the measured excess
Doppler frequency is 10Hz . In the lower part of the atmosphere this is reason-
able, but at higher altitudes the excess frequency is the range of 1 − 2Hz . For
comparison, the positional accuracy of the GPS and LEO satellite are within one
meter.
The bias on the Doppler frequency in the PLL processing scheme is in some re-
spect serious. In Sec. 3, the error analysis, it is stated that near the surface of the
Earth the bias should be smaller than 10m , in case of large gradients in the re-
fractive index (when the relative bias on the refractive index is supposed to be
smaller than 1%). At higher altitudes the conditions become worse, but is im-
proved by smaller values of the excess frequency, as mentioned above.

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In general the two methods are equivalent with respect to uncertainties, but nev-
ertheless, they are both critical with respect to the reasonable accuracy demands
stated in the error analysis (Sec. 3). With small gradients in the refractive index
both methods will work, but with larger gradients and small signal to noise ratios
the numbers shown in Table 3 are far form an uncertainty of 1 − 10m in the im-
pact parameter. The required accuracy of 1% can then only be obtained by av-
eraging over longer time with the result that the information about the gradients
will be averaged out.
The global measurement technique suggested in Sec. 4.2.3 is not included in this
comparison between the described processing methods, but it can be expected
that the uncertainties will be in the order of meter.
Another method described in the literature is the ‘MUSIC’ [Schmidt, 1986] proc-
essing method, which recently has been reported to give good results when used
on CHAMP data [Wickert et al. 2001]. The method is based on Karhunen-Loève
feature extraction theory, and are capable of detecting multipath. Its performance
is claimed to be better than the MLE method, but only marginally. Computation-
ally ‘MUSIC’ demands calculation of a covariance matrix for the signal and of the
eigenvalues of that matrix. The expected numbers of single paths have to be in-
cluded in the method. So, compared with the MLE method it is more computa-
tional intensive and not so flexible, but delivers marginal better results.
4.4 Signal processing conclusion
The aims in the signal processing part of this report have been to analyse the
phase locked loop (PLL) and the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method.
The results are viewed in the light of the error analysis presented in Sec. 4. The
error analysis is very important because it gives the requirements for the signal
processing method.
During this investigation is has been suggested to use a global method utilizing
the whole synthetic aperture. This is very promising, but the technique is pres-
ently not verified in details, so it will not be a part of the comparison of the differ-
ent methods.
In Sec. 4.3 numerical computation is done for the bias and uncertainties of the
processing method. Based on this and the analysis done throughout this report, a
descriptive comparison of the PLL, the MLE and the Karhunen-Loève feature
extraction method, ‘MUSIC’ have been shown in Table 1.

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Bias Uncertainty Multipath Pre-knowledge
PLL YES NO High/Moderate
Proportional to the Increases with the In the case of The position of the satel-
measured excess bandwidth of the multipath, the lites must be known in
frequency. processing signal can in the order to minimize the
scheme best case be re- measured excess Dop-
Increases with the constructed for pler frequency
bandwidth MLE processing
MLE NO YES Low
If the end of the Independent of The center frequency of
spectrum is not the bandwidth. the signal must be
used known approximately.
The uncertainty
depends on the
noise and the time
window
MUSIC NO YES Moderate/Low
The uncertainty is The number of single
marginally smaller path signals must be
than the MLE known
Table 1
The preferable signal processing method according to Table 1, the MLE method,
mostly because of its low demand of pre-knowledge. The MLE method is easy to
implement onboard the satellite, though the optimal performance can be difficult
to reach in a in-flight situation. A high sampling rate is here preferable and the
data can be reduced and packed so that only a limited bandwidth of a telemetric
connection to a ground station is necessary.

27/38
5 Appendices
5.1 Appendix I: Band pass filtered noise
In order to describe the impact of the noise we will first define and describe the
properties of the band pass filtered noise, which is the result of the pre-
processing. The noise is passing in the band pass ± 1 2 ∆ω around the centre
frequencies q and − q . The noise contribution around q is denoted by N + and
around − q , N − .
1
q + 12 ∆ω 1 ∆ω
2 (I.1)
2π q − 1∫2 ∆ω ∫
+ iωt iqt iωt
N (t ) = n (ω )e dt = e n (ω + q )e dω
− 12 ∆ω
− q + 12 ∆ω 1 ∆ω
1 2
∫ n(ω)e ∫ n(ω − q)e

− iωt − iqt iωt
N (t ) = dt = e dω
2π − q − 12 ∆ω − 12 ∆ω
The total noise N(t ) = N + + N − can be expressed as a sum of cosine and sine
functions, as shown below:
N(t ) = N + + N − = NC (t ) cos(qt ) − N S (t ) sin(qt ) (I.2)
where
1 ∆ω
1 2
∫ (n(ω + q ) + n(ω − q))e

iωt
NC (t ) = dω
2π − 12 ∆ω
1 ∆ω
i 2
∫ (n(ω + q ) − n(ω − q))e

iωt
N S (t ) = − dω
2π − 12 ∆ω
The pair (NC , NS ) can be considered as a pair of noise signals in quadrature. The
statistics for K = NC + iNS is Gaussian with the covariance matrix T given by:
Ti , j =< K(t i )K ∗ (t j ) >= 2E0 ∆f sinc( 21 ∆ω(t i − t j ) (I.3)
where ∆f = ∆ω 2π , and E 0 is the noise energy per frequency. E 0 is constant in
the whole noise spectrum due to the assumption that only white noise is present.
The noise power from the band pass filtering, E 0 ∆f , is proportional to the band-
width ∆f , which it should be from a physical point of view.
All the calculations assume that the center frequency, q , is much larger than the
bandwidth. For practical purposes the covariance matrix is diagonal: The sam-
pling rate should always be smaller or equal to the bandwidth of the band pass.

28/38
In the further computation, different moments of the noise signal K (t ) , its deriva-
tives are useful. In all the computations it has been assumed that the band pass
width is much smaller than the center frequency. Quantities with a dot over their
names mean the time derivatives. The first order moment yields:
< K (t ) >= 0 ; < KD (t ) >= 0 (I.4)
The second order moments yields:

< K (t )K ∗ (t ) >= 2E0 ∆f (I.5)
< K ∗KD >= 0
D D ∗ 4π 2
< K (t )K (t ) >= E0 (∆f )3
3
5.2 Appendix II: Intrinsic phase and frequency noise
The impact of additive noise at the detection of the phase of a narrow banded
signal is elaborated in the following. The detection of the phase is supposed to be
done in an ideal way, i.e. the PLL is working properly under all conditions. As a
result, the errors are only caused by the additive noise. If the signal to noise ratio
is low the description will not be adequate for the real detection process.
The signal plus noise can written as:

U (t ) = Q(t ) cos(qt + φ) + NC (t ) cos(qt ) − N S (t ) sin(qt ) = (II.1a)
R cos(qt + θ )
where Q is the amplitude of the signal, which is supposed to be slowly varying
compared to the variations caused by the carrier frequency, q , and the phase,
φ.
The band pass filtered version of Eq. II.1a yields
1 (II.1b)
U (t ) = R cos(θ )
2
The signal Q(t ) cos(φ) is supposed to survive the band pass filtering without any
disturbances or changes.
The amplitude R of the signal can be expressed as:

2 (II.2)
R = Q 2 + K + 2Q Re(Ke −iφ )
where K = NC + iNs
The detected phase θ yields:
θ = φ + ψ = Im(Log(Q(t )e iφ(t ) + K (t ))) (II.3)
here φ is the phase to be measured and, ψ , denotes the error phase.

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The time derivative of the phase is the frequency. From Eq. II.3 the frequency
error can be found to yield:
dψ − iφD K (t ) + KD (t ) + QD (t )e iφ (t ) (II.4)
= Im( )
dt Q(t )e iφ(t ) + K (t )
Averaging the derivative of the error phase gives the mean frequency error:
dψ 2E ∆f (II.5)
< >≅ − 2 0 φD
dt Q + 2E0 ∆f
This means that the frequency estimation has a bias. The variance of the fre-
quency error can be estimated from Eq. II.4. By keeping terms to second order in
the signal amplitude it yields:
dψ 1 2Q 2 E0 ∆f (II.6)
< ∆( )2 >≈ (φ 2 + ( ∆ω) 2 ) 2 2
dt 6 (Q + 2E0 ∆f )
where ∆ω is the angular frequency noise bandwidth. It is seen that the noise
bandwidth must be reduced to a minimum in the pre-processing stage.
The mean value and the variance dependence on the frequency shows that the
initial guess on the centre frequency are important. The best guess will be φD = 0 .
5.3 Appendix III: Maximum likelihood parameter estimation
The maximum likelihood method finds the most likely value of a parameter θ in
the logarithm to the conditional distribution function f ( xˆ θ ) , i.e. the distribution
function is maximized with respect to the parameter. It is supposed that the dis-
tribution function for the band pass filtered radio occultation signal is a product of
independent Gaussian distribution functions. However, this is not fully true. The
band pass noise is correlated, but only weakly in neighbour points. However
keeping the assumption the maximum likelihood function yields:
1 1 (III.1)
∑
2
M= − U (t i )− 
4πE0 ∆f 4E0 ∆f
where U (t ) is the measured multipath signal and 2E0 ∆f the noise power in the
band pass (see Eq. I.3). The times t i are all in the measuring time interval
[t − T / 2, t + T / 2] .

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For a general case of multipath rays, the complex band pass filtered signal can
be generalized form Eq. AII.1 to yield:
U (t ) = +K (t ) (III.2)

where
= ∑ Qp (t )e
iφ p ( t )
where the index p is a dummy number denoting a single path. The amplitudes
Q(t ) p are all supposed to be slowly varying quantities (compared to the variation
of the phase factors), q is the frequency, and φ p the phase for the single path.
The noise term K (t ) is defined in Appendix I.
The maximum likelihood function is nearly identical to a least square function,

besides the noise factors. The reason for keeping these terms is to get the Fisher
information out of the method.
The parameters that are to be estimated are the amplitude, the phase, the fre-
quency and eventually the derivative of the frequency for each single path signal
and the numbers of single paths appearing in the measurement. The parameters
are all time dependent quantities and we want to estimate their values at the time
t in the measuring time interval [t − T / 2, t + T / 2] . In order to do this the mean
signal is expanded in time around t . This yields:
= ∑ Qp (t + t ′)e p
iφ ( t + t ′ )
≅ (III.3)
i ( φ p (t )+t ′φD p (t )+ 21 t ′2φ
DD ( t ))
∑Q ≅ ∑ Qp (t )e
i ( φp (t )+t ′φD p ( t ))
p (t )e
where − T / 2 ≤ t ′ ≤ T / 2 .
In Eq.III.3 is has been assumed that the amplitudes are very slowly varying in
DD p , of the quadratic term compared
− T / 2 ≤ t ′ ≤ T / 2 . The time scale, τ p = 2π φ
with the measuring time T determines whether the derivative of the frequency
can be neglected or not. Here it will be assumed that T < τ p for all paths that
leads to the final approximation of the expected signal, as shown in Eq. III.3. This
last assumption is equivalent to suppose that the Doppler frequency is constant
during the measuring time. The parameters to be estimated are now the phases
φ p (t ) , the Doppler frequencies φ p and the amplitudes Q p . The estimation is
done by differentiating Eq. III.1 with respect to the wanted parameters and by
setting these equations equal to zero. Using Eq. III.3 the equations yields:
Re(e − iφl (t ) ∑ U (t + t i )e − iφl (t )ti ) = NQl (III.4)

where N = T∆f is the time bandwidth product or the number of samples.

31/38
Im(e − iφl (t ) ∑ U (t + t i )e − iφl (t )ti = 0 (III.5)

D
Im(e − iφl (t ) ∑ t i U (t + t i )e − iφl (t )ti ) = 0 (III.6)

D
Eq. III.4 and III.5 give the estimated values of the amplitude and phase for a sin-
gle pass l , with the condition that the Doppler frequency belongs to the same
single pass is known. The amplitude and phase becomes:
1 (III.7
∑

Ql = U (t + t i )e − iφl (t )t i
N
φ l = Phase(∑ U (t + t i )e −iφl (t )t i )

The result is, not surprisingly, that the amplitude of the l th single pass is equal to
the (temporal) mean value of the signal filtered with the frequency of the single
pass.
The second equation, which determines the Doppler frequency, is found by using
Eq. III.5 and III.6 together. This gives:
∑ (t i − t j )U(t + t i )U ∗ (t + t j )e l i j = 0
− iφD ( t )( t −t )
or
1 d 2
( ∑ U (t + t i )e −iφl (t )ti ) = 0
D
i dφD l (III.6)
The Doppler frequency is then found by Fourier transforming the band pass sig-
nal, and searching for the maximum frequencies in the absolute square of the
transform. This is equivalent to a spectral analysis of the signal.
An estimation procedure can generate a bias in the estimate for a parameter. In

order to investigate whether the Doppler frequency has a bias the additive noise
spectrum has to be known. If the noise spectrum is flat it will not affect the peak
position determination in the spectrum. This would be the case if the noise were
uncorrelated. The band pass filtering does, however, induce a correlation as
mention at the start of this Appendix. The mean noise spectrum can be stated as:
2
T /2
1
SN (ω, t ) =< ∫ K (t ′)e −iωt dt >
T −T / 2
(III.7)

32/38
Figure III.1
The normalized noise spectrum shown for various time-bandwidth products, N=16, 32 and 64.
4 E0 1
The units are in noise power T , and in frequency T .
From Figure III.1 it is seen that the noise spectrum is reasonable flat and thereby
neutral at the peak position determination. Only at the edges of the spectrum
variations occur. To prevent bias problems, a rule of only using 90% of the spec-
tral width could be applied.
In the following the Fisher information matrix will be computed in order to evalu-
ate the performance of the maximum likelihood method.
5.3.1 The Fisher information
The Fisher information matrix (for multi variable estimation) is defined as follows:
∂ 2M
(F ) i , j = − < >
∂ν i ∂ν j
where M is the maximum likelihood function, ν i the variable no. i . The brackets
denote an ensample averaged over the stochastic variables. With the form of the
maximum likelihood function given in Eq. III.1 the Fisher information matrix ele-
ment (i , j ) can be written as:

33/38
1 ∂ ∂ ∂ ∂ 
(F ) i , j = −
4E0 ∆f
∑( ∂ν i ∂ν j
+
∂ν i ∂ν j
) (III.7)
Computing Eq. III.7 yields:

FQQ FQφ FQφD   2EN0∆f 0 0 
   NQl2 
F =  FφQ Fφφ FφφD  =  0 2 E 0 ∆f 0  (III.8)
F FφD φ FφD φD   0 T 2NQl2 
 φD Q  0 24 E0 ∆f 
It is seen that the Fisher matrix is diagonal which means that the estimation of
the parameters can be performed independently. The matrix elements can be
considered as conditional information gains. By inverting the matrix the elements
can be considered as uncertainties. The eigenvalues of the inverted matrix gives
the main axis an uncertainty ellipsoid. In this case where the matrix is on a di-
agonal form the uncertainties of the estimated parameters becomes:
2E0 ∆f
( ∆Ql ) 2 =
N
2E0 ∆f
( ∆φl )2 = (III.9)
NQl2
24E ∆f
( ∆ωD,l ) 2 = (φ l ) 2 = 2 0 2
T NQl
5.4 Appendix IV: Fourier transformation of the radio occultation sig-

nal
The received signal has the form:

U (t ) = Q(t ) cos(qt + φ) + n(t ) (IV.1)
where q is the carrier frequency, φ the phase, Q the amplitude, and n is an ad-
ditive noise term. By mixing the signal with the carrier frequency, q , and apply-
ing a band pass having a width ∆f around q , the filtered complex signal be-
comes:
V (t ) = Q(t )e iφ(t ) + K (t ) (IV.2)
where the noise K (t ) is defined in Appendix I. It should be noted that the band
pass filter width, ∆ω , is not the same as used in the MLE method.
The Fourier transform of V (t ) yields:

t +T / 2 t +T / 2 (IV.3)
Vˆ (ω, t ) = ∫ Q(t ′)e
i ( φ (t ′) − ωt ′)
dt ′ + ∫ K (t )e dt ′
− iωt ′
t −T / 2 t −T / 2

34/38
To compute integral above the stationary phase method [Born & Wolf, Ch. Ap-
pendix III, 1999] will be used. By expanding the phase around a time t 1 the
phase yields:
φ(t ′) ≅ φ(t 1 ) + (t ′ − t 1 )φD (t 1 ) + 21 (t ′ − t 1 ) 2 φ DD(t 1 ) + 61 (t ′ − t 1 ) 3 φ DDD(t 1 ) + ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ (IV.4)
The time t 1 is determined by the condition φD (t 1 ) = ω that maps t 1 into the ω
space. Applying this condition to the Fourier integral yields: (the noise term is
omitted to simplify the writing)
t +T / 2
i ( φ (t ) − ωt + 1 ( t ′ −t )2 φ
DD ( t ) + 1 ( t ′ −t )3 φ
DDD(t ))
(IV.5)
Vˆ (ω, t ) = ∫ Q(t 1 + (t ′ − t 1 )e 1 1 2 1 1 6 1 1 dt ′
t −T / 2 ω = φD (t 1 )
Only terms up to third order are shown in the expansion of the phase. If the am-
plitude, and higher order phase terms, are varying slowly compared with the time
scale of the second order term τ = 2π φ DD , the Fourier integral can be approxi-
mated to:
t +T / 2
1
i (t ′−t1 )2 φ
DD ( t1 )) (IV.6)
Vˆ (ω, t ) ≅ Q(t 1 )e i (φ(t1 )−φ(t1 )t1 )
D
∫
t −T / 2
e2 dt ′
ω = φD (t 1 )
2πi
≅Q(t 1 )e i ( φ(t1 )−ωt1 ) D
DD
− φ(t 1 ) ω = φ ( t1 )
the condition ω = φ(t 1 ) is a mapping of time into frequency space.
The phase of the Fourier transform, υ , (see Eq. IV.6) is given by

υ = φ(t1) − φD (t1)t1 = φ(t1) − ωt1
(IV.7)
Differentiation of the phase of the Fourier transform with respect to frequency

yields:
dυ d dφ dt 1 dt
= (φ(t 1 ) − ωt 1 ) = − ω 1 − t 1 = −t 1 (IV.8)
dω dω dt 1 dω dω
Eq. IV.8 leads then to the formula for the determination of impact parameter as
function of time:
dυ
(ω, ) = (kΩa(t ),−t ) ∝ (a(t ), t ) IV.9
dω
To verify the assumptions, which lead to Eq. IV.6 expressions, for the amplitude
and the phase are needed.

35/38
5.4.1 Verification of assumptions
The amplitude Q can be expressed as [Leroy, 2001]:

P a 1
Q(t ) = ( G ) 2 (IV.10)
2π dθ
rG r L sin(θ )rG cos(ψ G )r L cos(ψ L )( ))
da
where index G and L are referring to the GPS- and the LEO satellites, respec-
tively. r is distance from Earth, ψ the angle between the radius and the ray path,
P the power and θ the angle between the satellites. The term dθ da is denoted
as the defocusing factor.
The phase can be written as
rL r
n 2r 2 − a2 G
n 2r 2 − a2
φ = k∫ dr + k ∫ dr + kaθ (IV.11)
r0
r r0
r
The time derivative of the phase (the Doppler frequency) yields:

ω(t ) = φD (t ) = krDG cos(ψ G ) + krDL cos(ψ L ) + kaθD
(IV.12)
D
where θ = Ω (assumed to be a constant). To make it simple, it is supposed that
the radial velocities are very small or zero. The second derivative of the phase
then yields:
DD ≅ kΩ aD = kΩ 2 ( dθ ) −1
φ
da (IV.13)
The approximate result stated in Eq. IV.6, the expression for the amplitude Eq.
IV.7 and the last result in Eq. IV.10 show the factor dθ da , the defocusing factor,
is cancelled out. The defocusing factor gives the main time scale for the ampli-
tude, so in this respect the assumption concerning the time variation of the ampli-
tude is ‘self’ fulfilled. The higher order phase term (from third order and on) de-
pends on angular velocity Ω in powers of the order, so it seems to be safe to
assume that these terms are decaying very fast ( Ω ≈ 10 −3 rad / sec )
Now, the final result can be obtained: Inserting the amplitude from Eq. IV.7, the
second derivative of the phase from Eq. IV.10 into the expression for the Fourier
transform Eq. IV.6. This can be rewritten to yield:
2πi
Vˆ (ω, t ) ≅ Q(t 1 )e i ( φ(t1 )−ωt1 ) D =
DD
− φ(t 1 ) ω = φ (t1 )
t +T / 2
aPG 1 (IV.14)
) 2 e iυ ( t 1 ) + iυ 0 ∫ K (t )e
− iωt ′
( + dt ′
rG r L sin(θ )rG cos(ψ G )r L cos(ψ L ))) ω = φD (t 1 )
t −T / 2
where υ 0 is a constant phase term.

36/38
6 References
Born, M. and E. Wolf, Principles of Optics, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Fjeldbo, G., A. J, Kliore, and Eshlermann. The neutral atmosphere of Venus

Studied with the Mariner V radio occultation experiments, Astron. J., 76(2), 123-
140, 1971.
Gorbunov, M. E., S. V. Sokolovskiy, and L. Bengtson, Advanced algorithms of

inversion of GPS/MET satellite data and their application to reconstruction of
temperature and humidity Tech. Rep Report No. 211, Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology, Hamburg, 1996.
Gorbunov, M. E., Radioholographic methods for processing radio occultation

data in multipath regions, Scientific Report 01-02, Danish Meteorological Insti-
tute, Copenhagen, 2001.
Kursinski, E. R., G. A. Hajj, J. T. Schofield, and R. P. Linfield, Observing Earth’s

Atmosphere with Radio Occultation Measurements using Global Positioning Sys-
tem. J. Geophys. Res., 102,(D19), 23,429-465, 1997.
Leroy, S. S., Amplitude of an occultation signal in three dimensions, submitted to

Radio Science, 2001.
Lindal, G. F., J. R. Lyons, D. N. Sweetnam, V. R. Eshleman, D. P. Hinson, and

G. L. Tyler, The atmosphere of Uranus: Results of radio occultation measure-
ments with Voyager 2, J. Geophys. Res., 92(A13), 14,987-001, 1987.
Meincke, M. D., Inversion methods for atmospheric profiling with GPS occulta-
tions. Scientific Report 99-11, Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen,
1999.
Melbourne, W. G., E. S. Davis, C. B. Duncan, G. A. Hajj, K. R. Hardy, E. R.

Kursinski, T. K, Meehan, L. E. Young, T. P. Younck, The application of GPS limb
sounding and global change monitoring. JPL publication 94-18, JPL, Pasadena,
CA, USA, 1994.
Mortensen, M. D. and P. Høeg, Inversion of GPS occultation measurements us-

ing Fresnel diffraction theory. Geophys Res. Letters, 25(13), 2446-2449, 1998.
Schmidt, R. O., Multiple emitter location and signal parameter estimation, IEEE
Transaction on Antennas and Propagation, AP-34, (3), 276-280, 1986.

37/38
Syndergaard, S. Retrieval Analysis and Methodologies in Atmospheric Limp
Sounding Using the GNSS Radio Occultation Technique, PhD thesis, ISSN-Nr.
0905-3263, ISSN-Nr. 1399-1949 (Online), ISBN-Nr. 87-7478-394-7, 1999.
Wickert, J., Reiger, C., Beyerle, G., Kçnig, R., Marquardt, C., Schmidt, T., Grun-
waldt, L., Gals, R., Meehan, T. K., Melbourne, W. G., Hocke, K. , Atmosphere
sounding by GPS radio occultation: First result from CHAMP, submitted to Geo-
physical Research Letter, 2001.

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ACE-Scientific Support Study

Radio Occultation Signal Analysis

Per Høeg, Arne Skov Jensen, Alan Steen Nielsen

Atmosphere Ionosphere Research Division

ESTEC Contract No. 14809/00/NL/MM

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

2 Physical model of the radio occultation signal

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

2.1 Characteristics of the Doppler signal: Scintillations and multi-

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

Case 1. Stationary, spherical symmetry

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

Case 2. Stationary, vertical perturbed spherical symmetry

In the case of a grating there is a possibility to discriminate between the multiple

Case 3. Stationary, horizontal perturbed spherical symmetry

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

b) 1 ≤ τ ≤ T The time changes are between the sampling time and

c) τ ≥ T The time changes are slower than the measuring time.

In b) the conditions are more complicated. If the whole atmosphere is changing

In c) the atmosphere can be considered, as stationary and the measuring condi-

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

By averaging the relative bias it can be written as:

 < eˆ(a) > dn~

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

c(0) 1 1 dα 2 < (eˆ(a)) 2 >

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

All estimation methods should in principle be comparable by a common figure of

In the case of radio occultation the signal is narrow-banded and consists of a

In the following the signal processing will be analyzed. First preprocessing is

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

1 Q(t )e − i (qt '+φ(t ' ) − qt ' ) + n

A narrow-banded signal can be described by the function:

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

4.2 Models for estimation of the impact parameter

The processing methods can be divided into three generic groups:

1. Instantaneous measurements. Tracking devices such as the phased

2. Local measurements. Measurement, which involves a group of data

3. Global measurements. This include transformation of the group of occul-

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

4.2.1 Signal processing with a phase detector.

4.2.1.1 Phase detection and noise

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

4.2.2 Maximum likelihood estimation of the Doppler frequencies

A common method for parametrical estimation is the maximum likelihood estima-

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

In the following the frequency and time resolution is discussed.

4.2.2.1 Discussion of time and frequency resolution

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

To conclude this discussion it is seen that spectrum analysis can be operated in

• A mode where the Doppler uncertainty is limited by noise

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

4.2.3 Global measurement of the occultation parameters

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

The wave propagator is used on a meteorological weather predicting analysts

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

ESTEC Contract No.14809/00/NL/MM WP6300(1), asj/DMI98-33-33

GPS-radius LEO-radius Wavelength GPS-velocity LE0-velocity

Relative angular velocity GPS-LEO radian/sec

Impact parameter velocity