Design of the SEASAT-A Radar Altimeter
- 1 January 1976
- conference paper
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Vol. 62, 222-229
- https://doi.org/10.1109/oceans.1976.1154217
Abstract
A third generation satellite radar altimeter to be flown on the SEASAT-A mission in 1978 is described. Building on SKYLAB and GEOS-C experience, a design has evolved that will allow a long-term goal of 10-cm altimetry to be realized. While dependent on recent developments in surface acoustic-wave device technology, the design in all other respects presents no major difficulty. A linear FM/full-deramp waveform and processing technique allows fine range tracking to be done in the frequency domain. A digital filter bank will provide 60 contiguous samples of the ocean return waveform with 3.125-ns resolution. An adaptive tracker built around a microprocessor will operate on the waveform samples to implement the basic height tracking function, adjusting its parameters in response to sensed waveheight.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Satellite Altimetry ApplicationsPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2005
- The S-193 radar altimeter experimentProceedings of the IEEE, 1974
- Objectives and Capabilities of the Skylab S-193 Altimeter ExperimentIEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics, 1972