Cramér-Rao bounds and estimation algorithms for delay/Doppler and conventional altimetry

Delay/Doppler radar altimetry has been receiving an increasing interest, especially since the launch of the first altimeter in 2010. It aims at reducing the measurement noise and increasing the along-track resolution in comparison with conventional pulse limited altimetry. A semi-analytical model was recently introduced for this new generation of delay/Doppler altimeters. The first contribution of this paper is the derivation of the Cramér-Rao bounds (CRBs) associated with the parameters of this recent delay/Doppler model. These bounds are then compared with those obtained for conventional altimetry. The second contribution of this paper is the derivation of a new weighted least squares estimator based on the semi-analytical delay/Doppler model. The performance of this estimator is very promising when compared to other more classical estimators and to the corresponding CRBs.