Initial Examination of AltiKa's Individual Echoes
Initial Examination of AltiKa's Individual Echoes
The AltiKa altimeter records the reflection of Ka-band radar pulses from the Earth's surface, with the commonly used waveform product involving the summation of 96 returns to provide average echoes at 40 Hz. Occasionally there are one-second recordings of the complex individual echoes (IEs), which facilitate the evaluation of on-board processing and offer the potential for new processing strategies. Our investigation of these IEs over the ocean confirms the on-board operations, whilst noting that data quantization limits the accuracy in the thermal noise region. By constructing average waveforms from 32 IEs at a time, and applying an innovative subwaveform retracker, we demonstrate that accurate height and wave height information can be retrieved from very short sections of data. Early exploration of the complex echoes reveals structure in the phase information similar to that noted for Envisat's IEs.
AltiKa altimeter, Ka-band, waveforms, individual echoes, phase analysis, retracking, coherence
73-85
Quartly, G.D.
6a16975d-24bc-4af2-aedc-06a1eb21f579
Passaro, M.
08b0a0ca-17a8-453e-b466-a1c37076f45f
2015
Quartly, G.D.
6a16975d-24bc-4af2-aedc-06a1eb21f579
Passaro, M.
08b0a0ca-17a8-453e-b466-a1c37076f45f
Abstract
The AltiKa altimeter records the reflection of Ka-band radar pulses from the Earth's surface, with the commonly used waveform product involving the summation of 96 returns to provide average echoes at 40 Hz. Occasionally there are one-second recordings of the complex individual echoes (IEs), which facilitate the evaluation of on-board processing and offer the potential for new processing strategies. Our investigation of these IEs over the ocean confirms the on-board operations, whilst noting that data quantization limits the accuracy in the thermal noise region. By constructing average waveforms from 32 IEs at a time, and applying an innovative subwaveform retracker, we demonstrate that accurate height and wave height information can be retrieved from very short sections of data. Early exploration of the complex echoes reveals structure in the phase information similar to that noted for Envisat's IEs.
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Published date: 2015
Keywords:
AltiKa altimeter, Ka-band, waveforms, individual echoes, phase analysis, retracking, coherence
Organisations:
Physical Oceanography
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Local EPrints ID: 383894
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/383894
ISSN: 0149-0419
PURE UUID: 1139bc2f-f19f-4e28-9cad-0f93e7a78077
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Date deposited: 11 Nov 2015 11:06
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 21:49
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Author:
G.D. Quartly
Author:
M. Passaro
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