A Rotating Knife-beam Altimeter for Wide-swath Remote Sensing of Ocean: Wind and Waves

Abstract

The use of a nadir altimeter radar with a rotating knife-beam antenna pattern isconsidered for improved measurements of the sea surface wind and wave parameters over awide swath. Theoretical calculations suggest the antenna beam rotating about the verticalaxis is able to provide wide swath of order 250-350 km. Processing of the signals using timeor Doppler sampling techniques results in the division of the antenna footprint intoelementary scattering cells of the order of 14x14 km. The theoretical algorithms developedhere indicate that the system may be used to retrieve the variance of large-scale slopes, thedirection of wave propagation and the wind speed in each cell. The possibility of measuringsignificant wave height is also analyzed. The combination of linear motion of the radar andthe rotation of the knife-beam antenna can be exploited to build up a two-dimensional mapof the surface, which enables better understanding of wave processes and to study theirstructure and temporal dynamics using repeated observations.

Keywords

• remote sensing
• ocean surface
• microwave radar
• wind and wave retrieval algorithms.