IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2016 - 40

TABLE 1. THE KEY FEATURES OF SATELLITE WIND SCATTEROmETERS [20].
PARAmETER

SASS

AmI SCAT

NSCAT

SEAWINDS

ASCAT

OSCAT

FreQUencY

14.6 GHz

5.3 GHz

13.995 GHz

13.4 GHz

5.3 GHz

13.5 GHz

PoLarization

V-H, V-H

V only

V, V-H V

V-outer/H-inner

V only

V-outer/H-inner

Beam resoLUtion

Fixed doppler

range gate

Variable doppler

Pencil beam

range gate

Pencil beam

science modes

many

sar, wind

Wind only

Wind/hi-res

Wind only

Wind/hi-res

resoLUtion

nominally 50 km

50 km

25 km

egg: 25 × 35 km
slice: 6 × 25 km

25/50 km

egg: 30 × 68 km
slice: 6 × 30 km

500

1,400

antenna
azimUtHs

sWatH, km

~750

~750

500

600

600

1,400

1,800

500

1,836

incidence anGLes

0-70°

18-59°

17-60°

46 and 54.4°

25-65°

49 and 57°

daiLY coVeraGe

Variable

< 41%

78%

92%

65%

> 90%

ers-1: 3/92-1/01
ers-2: 4/95-9/11

adeos-i:
8/96-6/97

Quikscat: 6/99-11/09
adeos-ii: 1/02-10/02

metop-a: 6/07-present
metop-B: 4/09-present

oceansat-2:
10/09-present

mission and dates seasat:
6/78-10/78

pulses by the small waves on the water surface [2]. At that
time, such backscatter represented nothing more than
a disturbance, making the identification of ships more
difficult and less reliable. As time passed, an awareness
that such a disturbance could also represent a source of
additional information started to emerge. For the last 50
years, microwave scatterometers on aircraft and satellites
have indeed proven their effectiveness in studying the
water-surface backscattering
signatures and in measuring
the wind vector over water.
FOR REMOTE STUdY
The idea of spaceborne scatOF A MICROWAVE
terometers was hatched with
bACKSCATTERInG
the advent of satellites, moSIGnATURE OF ThE WATER
tivated by difficulties in the
location of a huge number of
SURFACE FROM AIRCRAFT,
meteorological instruments
AIRbORnE SCATTEROMETERS
in the ocean. The first spaceARE USEd.
borne scatterometer was a
combined radiometer/scatterometer (RADSCAT) operated as a part of the Skylab experiment flown in 1973
[17]. Before then, a number of airborne and platform scatterometer experiments had to be performed in advance
to study water-surface backscattering properties; to determine their dependence on incidence and azimuth angles,
frequency, polarization, and wind speed and direction [9],
[17]-[19]; and to develop appropriate geophysical model
functions for wind retrieval.
The measurement geometry is a very important factor in the wind-retrieval process. Two approaches are
40

commonly used to collect multiple measurements of the
water-surface NRCS from different azimuth directions:
1) a multifan-beam antenna geometry and 2) a pencilbeam rotating antenna geometry. On satellites, the multifan-beam geometry has been used, for example, for the
European scatterometers on the European Remote Sensing Satellites (ERS)-1 and ERS-2 [advanced microwave
instrument (AMI) scatterometers], the meteorological
operational satellites MetOp-A and MetOp-B [advanced
scatterometers (ASCAT)-A and ASCAT-B], and for the
NASA scatterometers on the seafaring satellite SeaSat-A
[SeaSat-A scatterometer system (SASS)] and the Advanced
Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) [NASA scatterometer
(NSCAT)]. A disadvantage of the traditional satellite fanbeam scatterometer designs is the nadir gap between right
and left swaths. Therefore, newer designs of the pencilbeam rotating antenna geometry have been used for other
scatterometers mounted, e.g., at the NASA scatterometer
satellite QuikSCAT (SeaWinds scatterometer), the Indian
Oceansat-2 [Oceansat-2 scatterometer (OSCAT)], and the
Chinese HY-2A [Ku-band rotating fan-beam scatterometer
(KU-RFSCAT)]. The key features of several satellite wind
scatterometers are presented in Table 1.
For remote study of a microwave backscattering signature of the water surface from aircraft, airborne scatterometers are used. Measurements are typically performed at
either a circular track flight using a fixed fan-beam antenna
(Figure 1) or a rectilinear track flight using a rotating antenna (Figure 2) [6], [7], [9], [21]-[23]. An overview of some
airborne scatterometers is presented in Table 2. A detailed
overview of airborne and spaceborne missions, equipment,
ieee Geoscience and remote sensinG maGazine

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