Measuring directional wave spectra and wind speed with a scanning radar altimeter

Author

Walsh, E.J. ; Vandemark, D. ; Wright, C.W. ; Swift, R.N. ; Scott, J.F. ; Hines, D.E.

Author_Institution

Lab. for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Wallops Island, VA, USA

Volume

3

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

1860

Abstract

The NASA Scanning Radar Altimeter (SRA) transmits a 8-ns duration pulse at Ka-band (8.3 mm) and measures time of flight as it scans a 1° (two-way) beam from left to right across the aircraft ground track. The configuration determines the surface elevation at 64 points spaced at uniform angular intervals of about 0.7° across a swath whose width is about 0.8 times the aircraft altitude. The system generates these raster lines of the surface topography beneath the aircraft at about a 10 Hz rate. In postflight processing the SRA wave topographic data are transformed with a two-dimensional FFT and Doppler corrected to produce directional wave spectra from which wind data can be determined

Keywords

airborne radar; atmospheric boundary layer; atmospheric techniques; ocean waves; oceanographic techniques; radar altimetry; remote sensing by radar; wind; 8.3 mm; Doppler correction; Ka-band; NASA Scanning Radar Altimeter; directional wave spectra; scanning radar altimeter; surface elevation; surface topography; two-dimensional FFT; wave topographic data; wind speed; Airborne radar; Aircraft; NASA; Pulse measurements; Radar measurements; Radar tracking; Surface topography; Time measurement; Velocity measurement; Wind speed;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1999. IGARSS '99 Proceedings. IEEE 1999 International

Conference_Location

Hamburg

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5207-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.1999.772119

Filename

772119