Waveform aliasing in satellite radar altimetry Walter H. F. Smith and Remko Scharroo, NOAA Lab for Satellite Altimetry Beginning with Seasat and continuing through the design for Jason-CS, all satellite radar

Beginning with Seasat and continuing through the design for Jason-CS, all satellite radar altimeters have employed a pulse compression scheme known as full-deramp of a linear FM chirp. The process by which all conventional altimeters create a waveform from digitized radar echoes can lead to aliasing of the waveform. This was first noted by Bob Jensen in a 1999 paper (IEEE TGRS 37(2):651-658, doi:10.1109/36.752182). We have examined the problem both theoretically and experimentally, using raw digitized echo samples from CryoSat’s SAR mode.