Satellite Radar Altimeter Accuracy

A radar altimeter ra radio altimeter ralt electronic altimeter or reflection altimeter measures altitude above the terrain presently beneath an aircraft or spacecraft by timing how long it takes a beam of radio waves to travel to ground reflect and return to the craft.

Satellite radar altimeter accuracy.

Bathymetry is measurement of the depth of the ocean. Free electrons in the atmosphere can delay the signal s return affecting the measurement accuracy. An altimeter measures how high something is. A series of satellite missions that started with topex poseidon t p in 1992 and continued with jason 1 2001 2013 jason 2 2008 2019 and jason 3 2016 present estimate.

Launched in 1992 as a joint mission of the american and french space agencies and still operating as of 2001 t p is the most accurate altimeter flown to date. The delay is directly related to the radar frequency so the difference between the two measurements can. Abstract the unprecedented accuracy of elevations retrieved from the ice cloud and land elevation satellite icesat laser altimeter is investigated and used to characterize the range errors in the environmental satellite envisat and european remote sensing 2 satellite ers 2 radar altimeters over the continental ice sheets. Its microwave radars measure the distance to the sea surface with a precision of 2 cm.

A satellite radar altimeter is a nadir looking radar with very high range resolution which measures the ocean surface topography with an accuracy in the order of few centimeters. The poseidon 3 altimeter emits pulses at two frequencies 13 6 and 5 3 ghz to measure the distance from the satellite to the surface range. Additionally analysis of the echo amplitude and shape can extract information about the wind speed and wave height respectively. Figure 1 shows a schematic of the topex poseidon t p satellite altimeter system.