High Resolution Scatterometry by Simultaneous Range/Doppler Discrimination

Several spaceborne scatterometer missions have been successfully flown in the past decade. In addition to the primary mission of measuring ocean surface wind speed and direction, these measurements have proven useful in global scale climate studies of land and ice phenomena as well. A key shortcoming of the scatterometer in these measurements has been the rather coarse spatial resolution available. In this paper, the application of simultaneous range/Doppler discrimination (i.e., synthetic aperture) techniques are proposed as way of improving the single-pass resolution of conically scanning pencil-beam scatterometer systems. The unique challenges of applying the synthetic aperture approach to a conically scanning system are identified and addressed.