The possibility of exploiting navigation signals for remote sensing applications has been the object of extensive scientific research. Over the last few years, the potential of this technique has been mainly investigated for the observation of the ocean, resulting in new space missions, currently in orbit or under study.

The use of signals transmitted by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), in particular, has attracted significant scientific and industrial interest, especially for land applications.

The possibility of retrieving soil moisture, vegetation biomass, or monitoring the freeze/thaw state and inundations, by means of GNSS reflections, has recently been confirmed through the analysis of ground-based data, airborne measurements, and technology demonstration missions. In this frame, several research groups are involved in studies based on the exploitation of data produced by the NASA CyGNSS mission, which is presently still ongoing.

Even if all these campaigns significantly contributed to consolidating the physics that is behind the interaction between navigation signals and the bio-geophysical parameters of the illuminated surface, a complete understanding of data needs further scientific efforts, especially for satellite observations.

The session is focused on the recent advances made in GNSS-R remote sensing, to give detailed pictures about both the state of the art of modeling activities, of retrieval approaches, and of other applications.