Hardware design overview of a satellite scatterometer

This paper provides an overview of the hardware design of the Scatterometer Electronics Subsystem (SES) [1] which is the heart of the SeaWinds payload developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to fly on the Japanese ADEOS-II Satellite. The SES provides the radar electronics function. There is also a Scatterometer Antenna Subsystem (SAS) and a Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) that comprises the entire SeaWinds payload. This hardware has been under development since early 1995 and recently undergone a major design upgrade to provide a higher spatial resolution wind measurement. The hardware is currently at JPL undergoing system-level integration.