SIRAL, a high spatial resolution radar altimeter for the Cryosat mission

Author

Rey, L. ; De Château-Thierry, P. ; Phalippou, L. ; Mavrocordatos, C. ; Francis, R.

Author_Institution

Alcatel Space Industrie, Toulouse, France

Volume

7

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

3080

Abstract

SIRAL (SAR Interferometer Radar Altimeter) is the new spaceborne altimeter designed for CryoSat mission. This ESA mission, planned for 2004, will be used to estimate-on a global scale- the fluctuations in mass of sea-ice and land-ice. The novelty of SIRAL concept with respect to conventional pulse-limited altimeter, is the implementation of Doppler processing for along-track resolution enhancement and also of interferometry, used to locate the echo in the across-track direction. The innovative technical features of SIRAL are presented hereafter with regards to the function requirements and also the expected performance

Keywords

hydrological equipment; ice; oceanographic equipment; radar altimetry; radar resolution; radiowave interferometers; remote sensing by radar; sea ice; synthetic aperture radar; CryoSat mission; Doppler processing; SAR interferometer radar altimeter; SIRAL; across-track direction; along-track resolution enhancement; conventional pulse-limited altimeter; interferometry; land ice; sea-ice; spaceborne altimeter; Frequency; Ice; Instruments; Interferometry; Receiving antennas; Sea measurements; Sea surface; Spaceborne radar; Spatial resolution; Synthetic aperture radar;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2001. IGARSS '01. IEEE 2001 International

Conference_Location

Sydney, NSW

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7031-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2001.978261

Filename

978261