GNSS-R altimeter based on doppler multi-looking

Measuring ocean mesoscale variability is one of the main objectives of next generation satellite altimeters. Current radar altimeters make observations only at the nadir sub-satellite ground track, which is not sufficient to sample the ocean surface with the required spatial and temporal sampling. The GNSS-R concept has been proposed as an alternative observation system in order to overcome this limitation, since it allows performing altimetry along several points simultaneously over a very wide swath. Latest proposed GNSS-R altimeter configurations allow measuring sea height with an accuracy of few decimeters over spatial scales of 50–100 km, by means of a single-pass. This paper proposes an innovative processing and retracking concept for GNSS-R altimeters based on the acquisition of the full delay-Doppler map (DDM), which allows to acquire multiple waveforms at different Doppler frequencies, whose footprints are located outside the typical pulse-limited region. The proposed processing adapts the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) delay-Doppler concept of spaceborne radar altimeters for use in a GNSS-R system. This processing yields additional multi-look with respect to conventional GNSS-R concepts and translates into an improvement of the altimetry performance estimated to be at least 25%–30%, and even higher, depending on the wanted along-track spatial resolution. The proposed processing can also provide measurements with high spatial resolution at best possible performance, and more generally, offers various possibilities for optimal trade-off between spatial resolution and height estimation accuracy.