End-to-end performance analysis of a paris in-orbit demostrator ocean altimeter

The PARIS in orbit demonstrator is a novel altimeter concept recently proposed by the European Space Agency with has the objective of observing ocean mesoscale features with an expected sea surface height estimation accuracy of about 20 cm and unprecedented simultaneous spatial-temporal sampling of the ocean. This altimeter is based on the well known PARIS (also defined as GNSS-R) technique, which performs altimetry by exploiting the properties of GNSS signals scattered off the ocean surface. The PARIS IoD is novel because it is based on the so called "interferometric" concept, which, by cross-correlating direct and reflected navigations signals, allows exploiting at the maximum possible the spectral characteristics of GPS and Galileo signals and thus maximizing the height accuracy of such altimeter. This paper will present an analysis of the expected altimetry performance of such instrument by analyzing the major error contributors.