Re-tracking of SAR altimeter ocean power-waveforms and related accuracies of the retrieved sea surface height, significant wave height and wind speed

This paper describes the simulation of the power-waveforms acquired in by a radar altimeter operating in SAR mode over ocean surfaces, including the effects of the radar transfer function and of the geophysical ocean parameters, namely the sea surface height( SSH), the sea surface wave height (SWH) and the surface wind speed (WS). The performances of the SAR mode with respect to the retrieval of the ocean geophysical variables (SSH, SWH, WS) are then computed using the Cramer-Rao estimation bounds. It is shown that the radar to ocean range estimation provided by the SAR mode is improved by more than a factor of two compared with conventional Ku band altimeters. Improvements on SWH and wind speed are also discussed.