A New Approach to the Design of Wind Scatterometers

This paper outlines a new approach to the design of satellite wind scatterometers which promises a major reduction in power consumption whilst maintaining, or even improving, the measurement accuracy. The approach permits a larger antenna area to be used and allows the available RF energy to be distributed in an efficient manner such that optimum measurement accuracy can be achieved throughout the swath. The proposed scatterometer offers flexibility to accommodate the illumination requirements in the light of more advanced and accurate backscatter coefficient models or the needs of a particular region in the swath. Bias errors caused by satellite attitude uncertainty are reduced. Results are given for a design example in Ku-band.