An assessment of the Ka band interferometric radar altimeter for monitoring rivers and lakes with the WatER mission

Abstract

The Water Elevation Recovery (WatER) satellite mission was recently proposed and supported by a large international scientific community. It is dedicated to the determination of land surface water extent, elevation and slope, and also ocean mesoscale and submesoscale phenomena, using a Ka band Radar Interferometer (KaRIN) as its primary instrument. This instrument is able to provide the appropriate space-time sampling required to observe full signatures of the parameters characterizing these phenomena. However, determining these parameters to the accuracy desired for hydrologic applications is challenging. error sources and implemented ground processing techniques to go from the original raw data to science data. We examined the impact of external errors in detail and implement calibration techniques that rely on the use of ancillary topographic data such as the SRTM digital elevation model. Ways of reducing initial instrument errors by averaging or fitting polynomial to height values over rivers and lake of various widths and for a range of water surface RMS slopes are presented. Finally, we show how the scientific requirements of the mission are met for all cases.This paper just gives an overview of the studies that are deeply detailed in [6][7].