Analytical Models for Multipath and Switch Leakage for the SWOT Interferometer

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 1;22(5):1931. doi: 10.3390/s22051931.

Abstract

The Ka-Band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument on the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a single-pass synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometer tasked with, among others, measuring ocean topography to within a few centimeters over kilometer scale resolutions. A SAR interferometer relies on very precise phase difference measurements between two spatially distant antennas to estimate topography. Multipath phase caused by unintended scattering off the spacecraft structure is a known error source for radar interferometers and takes up a significant portion of the KaRIn error budget. This paper outlines some analytical multipath models that were used for instrument design, performance analysis and mitigation of the multipath signal.

Keywords: SAR interferometry; multipath phase; ocean topography; radar.