A Semianalytical Model of the Synthetic Aperture, Interferometric Radar Altimeter Mean Echo, and Echo Cross-Product and Its Statistical Fluctuations

Wingham, Duncan J.; Giles, Katharine A.; Galin, Natalia; Cullen, Robert; Armitage, Thomas W. K.; Smith, Walter H. F.

doi:10.1109/tgrs.2017.2756854

i

A Semianalytical Model of the Synthetic Aperture, Interferometric Radar Altimeter Mean Echo, and Echo Cross-Product and Its Statistical Fluctuations

2018
By Wingham, Duncan J. ; Giles, Katharine A. ; Galin, Natalia ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Personal Author:

Wingham, Duncan J. ; Giles, Katharine A. ; Galin, Natalia ; Cullen, Robert ; Armitage, Thomas W. K. ; Smith, Walter H. F.
NOAA Program & Office:

NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) ; STAR (Center for Satellite Applications and Research)
Description:

This paper develops a model of the synthetic aperture, interferometric satellite radar altimeter echo power, and echo cross-product. The model uses the smallness of the satellite pitch and roll angles, and the limited range of satellite altitude to provide a semianalytical echo model, whose numerical dimensions are limited to two in the synthetic aperture case or three in the interferometric case at large roll angles, making its application to extensive data practical. By not implementing the synthetic beam formation, it is demonstrated that the model recovers the conventional case of a pulse-limited altimeter. A theoretical description of the fluctuations in the multilooked, interferometric cross-product, and the synthetic aperture and pulse-limited powers is given by extending the model to describe correlations between individual looks in each case. The model offers the potential to retrieve ocean-surface parameters from synthetic aperture and pulse-limited altimeter data simultaneously, with obvious application to the new generation of altimeters onboard CryoSat-2, Sentinel-3, and Sentinel-6 during the transition to operational synthetic aperture radar altimetry.
Source:

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 56(5), 2539-2553
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1109/tgrs.2017.2756854
ISSN:

0196-2892 ; 1558-0644
Format:

PDF
Publisher:

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:818a7eecdde8b074d68e063325e122f4558afe17f37b7a4201ace334b459a74e26910799e5f39fd99986a035f15a0783293dafd7d439f4fac7ce42caa2726a25
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/61750/noaa_61750_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 3.21 MB ]

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