IEEE 4003-2021

The scope of this effort is to develop a standard for data and metadata content arising from spaceborne global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) missions, which uses GNSS signals as signals of opportunity, as described in “The IEEE SA Working Group on Spaceborne GNSS-R: Scene Study.” In particular, this standard would provide a means for describing: a) The terminology assigned to GNSS-R data and products, such as the product levels. b) The structure and content of the data. This includes, but is not limited to, units of measure, data organization, data description, data encoding, and data storage format. c) The metadata. This includes and is not limited to metadata, methods and algorithms applied to the data, parameters related to the algorithms, citation information, instrument calibration and characterization, and description of the input signals.

The purpose of this standard is to provide a set of specifications and recommended practices that can be used to describe any known and future spaceborne GNSS-R data set, allowing users to work with different GNSS-R data sets at the same time. The definition of such standard would also allow any software that uses these data to fully operate and ingest any spaceborne GNSS-R input data as they will conform to the same standard.

New IEEE Standard - Active. In February 2019 a Project Authorization Request was approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association with the title “Standard for Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) Data and Metadata Content”. A Working Group was assembled to develop this standard with the purpose of unifying and documenting GNSS-R calibration procedures and product level definitions. The Working Group (https://sagroups.ieee.org/4003/) includes members, collaborators, and contributors from academia, international space agencies, and private industry. In a face-to-face meeting held during the ARSI+KEO 2019 Conference, the need was recognized to develop a standard with a wide range of operations, providing procedure guidelines independent of any constraints imposed by current limitations on geophysical parameter retrieval algorithms. As such, this effort aims to establish the fundamentals of a potential network of satellites providing inter-comparable data to the scientific community