Oceansat-II Scatterometer: Sensor Performance Evaluation, \sigma^ Analyses, and Estimation of Biases

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing 2014-06, Vol.52 (6), p.3310-3315
• Main Authors: Misra, Tapan, Chakraborty, Prantik, Misra, Arundhati, Rao, Jogeswara, Dave, Dilip B., Rao, C. V. Narasimha, Desai, Nilesh M., Arora, Rajkumar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Bias estimation; deramping; Doppler shift; Estimation; instrument noise calibration; normalized radar backscatter cross section (\sigma^{0}); Oceansat-II; QuikSCAT; Radar measurements; Receivers; roll-pitch-yaw biases; scatterometer; Signal to noise ratio; signal-to-noise ratio (SNR); Spaceborne radar
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2013.2272544

The Oceansat-II Scatterometer has completed two years in orbit. The instrument has been declared operational, and the normalized radar cross section (σ 0 ) and wind products are being made routinely available to the global operational Numerical Weather Prediction community. The σ 0 data from the sensor have been rigorously analyzed for the past two years. Efforts have been put to systematically correlate the biases observed in the data to the onboard functionality of the instrument and to precisely quantify these biases. These analyses have helped not only in the refinement of the ground-processing algorithm but also in the evaluation of sensor performance. This paper presents some of the analyses that have been carried out related to instrument noise calibration with reference to deep-space observations, estimation of biases in the signal bandwidth, and estimation of fixed remnant attitude biases. This paper also addresses the means for rectifying these instrument-related biases.