International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / A radar scatterometer transmits a series of RF pulses and measures the total-power
(energy) of the backscattered signal. Measurements of the backscattered energy from
the ocean's surface can be used to infer the near-surface wind vector [7]. Accurate
backscatter energy measurements are required to insure accurate wind estimates.
Unfortunately, the signal measurement is noisy so a separate measurement of the
noise-only total-power is subtracted from the signal measurement to estimate the echo
signal energy. A common metric for evaluating the accuracy of the scatterometer
energy measurement is the normalized signal variance, termed K(p). In designing a
scatterometer tradeoffs in design parameters are made to minimize K(p).
Spaceborne scatterometers have traditionally been based on fan-beam antennas and
CW modulation for which expressions for K(p) exist. Advanced pencil-beam
scatterometers, such as SeaWinds currently being developed by NASA use modulated
Signals so that new K(p) expressions are required. This paper outlines the derivation of
the generalized K(p) expression. While very complicated in its exact form, with a
simplified geometry the K(p) expression can be related to the radar ambiguity function.
The resulting analysis yields insights into the tradeoffs inherent in a scatterometer
design and permits analytic tradeoffs in system performance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/608532 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Long, David G. |
| Publisher | International Foundation for Telemetering |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Proceedings |
| Rights | Copyright © International Foundation for Telemetering |
| Relation | http://www.telemetry.org/ |
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