Oceansat-II Scatterometer: Sensor Performance Evaluation, Analyses, and Estimation of Biases

The Oceansat-II Scatterometer has completed two years in orbit. The instrument has been declared operational, and the normalized radar cross section (σ⁰) and wind products are being made routinely available to the global operational Numerical Weather Prediction community. The σ⁰ data from the sensor have been rigorously analyzed for the past two years. Efforts have been put to systematically correlate the biases observed in the data to the onboard functionality of the instrument and to precisely quantify these biases. These analyses have helped not only in the refinement of the ground-processing algorithm but also in the evaluation of sensor performance. This paper presents some of the analyses that have been carried out related to instrument noise calibration with reference to deep-space observations, estimation of biases in the signal bandwidth, and estimation of fixed remnant attitude biases. This paper also addresses the means for rectifying these instrument-related biases.