The first European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS-1), planned to be launched in 1987, will be devoted to the observation of coastal zones and oceans. Because of its all-weather capability, a microwave payload has been defined and industrial studies have confirmed the payload feasibility in terms to technology availability, mass and power consumption. Two distinct instruments have been studied: a Radar Altimeter (RA) and an Active Microwave Instrumentation (AMI). The paper describes the instruments' hardware design and outlines some of their applications. The Radar Altimeter is a Ku-band instrument for the determination of satellite altitude, the measurement of the significant wave-height and sea backscatter coefficient, rather similar to the SEASAT Altimeter. The Active Microwave Instrumentation is a C-band microwave sensor package capable of performing three distinct instrument functions: 1) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for high resolution, wide swath imaging 2) Wave Scatterometer for the observation of two-dimensional ocean wave spectra 3) Wind Scatterometer for the measurement of wind speed and direction over the ocean. The AMI is designed such that it can be operated in an interleaved wind and wave mode over the oceans, which, together with the Radar Altimeter information on significant wave heights, allows global sampling of the oceans three-dimensional wave spectra and the two-dimensional wind-fields. The SAR imaging mode can be used over land, ice and coastal zones.


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    Title :

    The microwave payload for the ESA remote sensing satellite (ERS-1)


    Additional title:

    Die Mikrowellennutzlast fuer den fernsensierenden Satelliten (ERS-1) der ESA


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    1981


    Size :

    11 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 7 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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