The radar altimeters flown on Geos-3 (1975), Seasat-l (1978), and Geosat-l (1985) have amply demonstrated the benefits of high-precision measurements of ocean-surface topography, both to geodesy and to oceanography. Two new altimetry missions are planned: the joint NASA/Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales TOPEx/Poseidon mission, to be launched in 1992, and the Navy's Special Purpose Inexpensive ...

Satellite images are an effective tool for the detection of phytoplankton blooms, since they cause striking changes in water color. Bloom intensity can be expressed in terms of chlorophyll-a concentration. Previous studies suggest the use of Landsat TM4/TM3 reflectance ratio to retrieve surface chlorophyll-a concentration from aquatic systems. In this study we assumed that a remote sensing trop...

TECHNICAL REPORT – 2013, April Abstract The concept of delay/Doppler altimetry has been under study since the mid 90’s, aiming at reducing the measurement noise and increasing the along-track resolution in comparison with the conventional pulse limited altimetry. This paper introduces a new model for the mean backscattered power waveform acquired by a radar altimeter operating in SAR mode, as w...

Conventional ocean color satellites sensors are not very suitable for inland and coastal waters applications due to their low spatial resolutions. High spatial resolution satellite sensors are required to monitor the water quality of inland and coastal waters. The conventional high-resolution satellites such as Landsat, SPOT and IKONOS have limited number of spectral bands. In comparison, the W...

The development of radar altimetry over rivers along the past 20 years has shown a strong potential to provide hydrologist with valuable information on river water level dynamics. The development of new sensors and satellite mission concepts such as spatial interferometry or temporal interferometry opens midterm (10-20 years) perspectives for the spatialized measurement of river surface variabl...

This article describes an investigation of the new possibilities offered by SAR altimetry compared with conventional altimetry in the detection and characterization of non-ocean targets. We explore the capabilities of the first SAR altimeter installed on the European Space Agency satellite CryoSat-2 for the detection and characterization of ships. We propose a methodology for the detection of a...