HY-2A radar altimeter design and in flight preliminary results

HY-2A, the China´s first satellite for oceanic dynamic environment measurement, was launched on August 16th, 2011. As one of main payloads of HY-2A, HY-2A radar altimeter (RA/HY-2A) has been operating stably since the launch, and obtained a lot of scientific data. RA/HY-2A is a dual-frequency (Ku and C band) radar altimeter with a conventional pulse-limited method, and some new techniques such as model compatible tracker are adopted in it. The accuracy of RA/HY-2A is better than 2cm (@4m SWH) or 4cm (@20m SWH), and the inversion results show that RA/HY-2A meets the design requirements. In this paper, the design and in flight results of RA/HY-2A are discussed.