Sensitivity Analysis of Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) Derived Multipath Phase Towards Surface Soil Moisture Over Agricultural Land

Abstract

Estimation of soil moisture is significant in various fields like agriculture, climatic studies, hydrology etc. The feasibility of India’s NavIC multipath signal for estimating soil moisture is presented in this paper. The analysis is carried out for carrier to noise ratio (C/N0) of the multipath NavIC signal which depends on reflectivity of signal from the soil surface. Multipath data is collected over a period of 36 days in the month of November and December 2019 and analyzed for its sensitivity towards volumetric soil moisture content. The receiver set up for experimental data collection was placed in agricultural land situated in Dehradun, India. Results show that there is a significant correlation between the phase of the multipath signal and volumetric moisture content of soil.