Performance simulation of a spaceborne dual-frequency Rotating Fanbeam SCATterometer

In this paper, a conceptual design for a dual-frequency Rotating Fanbeam SCATterometer (RFSCAT) to fly onboard the future satellite (e.g. FY-3) with altitude of 836km is studied. System configurations of the studied C- and Ku-band RFSCAT are introduced respectively. Then an end-to-end simulation process is adopted to analyze the backscatter measurement accuracy, ant to assess the wind retrieval quality of the proposed RFSCAT. For a wind vector cell with spatial resolution of 25 km, the communication noise ranges from 4% to 90% for the Ku-band measurement, and from 3% to 25% for the C-band one, depending on ocean surface wind speed. The simulation results indicate that the proposed system would promote the wind retrieval qualities significantly by combining the C- and Ku-band microwave measurement.