Abstract The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) is the first European laser altimeter constructed for interplanetary flight. BELA uses a 50 mJ pulsed Nd:YAG operating at 10 Hz with 20 cm aperture receiver to perform ranging. instrument also digital approach range detection and pulse analysis. ranging accuracy expected be better than 2 metres ∼20 in optimum conditions. With given, only slightly ...

Over the past 18 months, a pilot system has been developed which has generated global lake and river level measurements from the Envisat RA-2. These data are produced within 3-5 days of measurement, using retracked Level 1B altimeter echoes merged with data from the IGDR to obtain both orbit and atmospheric/instrument corrections. A global version of this system has now been in operation for ov...

Coupled ocean wave and circulation models have been implemented under the IOEPAS program (Integrated Ocean Environment Prediction and Assimilation System). The third generation wave model, WAM and the South East Asian Ocean Model (SEAOM) based on the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) are coupled through wave-current interaction terms. The modeling capability has been improved from the altimeter data ...

The measurement of the range (or actually delay time) performed by an altimeter is affected by the delay of the ionosphere. This delay is in turn dependent on the frequency used. One of the major innovations of RA-2 is the second channel, at S-band (3.2 GHz), that provides the altimeter with the ionospheric correction This paper describes the characteristics of the S-band channel in RA-2, the u...

A global dataset of two years (September 1998 to December 2000) of ERS SAR data was reprocessed to more than one million SAR imagettes. Met ocean Parameters like significant ocean wave height (Hs), wind speed (U10) and mean wave period (Tm-10) are derived from the SAR images using a new empirical algorithm CWAVE [1]. The results are compared to collocated ERS altimeter data and in Situ measurem...

The algorithm of lengthened objects detection is based on statistical processing of reflected pulse altimeter signal. The method of maximum posteriori probability is applied to make a decision. Minimum of maximum posteriori probability is accorded with lengthened objects position. This fact is taken into account to detect the objects’ position. This algorithm allows autonomic navigation to be i...