An extended analysis of along-track antenna pattern compensation for SAR altimetry

One of the main benefits of the along-track processing in Synthetic Aperture Radar altimetry [1] is the speckle reduction that is achieved by averaging all the observations accumulated for a same scattering area. Being the different observations obtained by looking at the same scattering area from different positions of the instrument along the orbit, they result to be modulated by the along-track antenna pattern. By compensating the along-track antenna pattern before averaging, a higher speckle reduction can be achieved. This paper is aimed at presenting this processing method and at evaluating the possible improvement in the sense of the effective number of looks and of the precision of the physical parameters retrieved from the power waveforms.