A Matching Method for Establishing Correspondence Between Satellite Radar Altimeter Data and Transponder Data Generated During Calibration

Abstract

This letter presents a method for matching satellite radar altimeter data and transponder data generated during in situ calibration. The transponder generates a measurement error when it measures the arrival time of the altimeter's transmitted signal and embeds the error in both the transponder's recorded data and the altimeter's recorded data. The second-order finite difference sequence of this error sequence can be extracted from the raw data; thus, the correspondence between two identical but mismatched second-order difference sequences can be uniquely established. The measurement error is utilized, and a data matching method that can uniquely establish the correspondence between the altimeter's recorded data sequence and the transponder's recorded data sequence is presented. This postprocessing method does not increase the real-time signal processing workload of the transponder. Furthermore, the principles underlying this method can be used for any transponder that can adjust the response signal delay during calibration.