W. Cudlip et M. Milnes, OVERVIEW OF ALTIMETER DATA-PROCESSING AT THE UK EARTH OBSERVATION DATA CENTER, International journal of remote sensing, 15(4), 1994, pp. 871-887
ERS-1 carries the fifth radar altimeter to be launched into Earth orbi
t. Although similar in concept and design to earlier altimeters, it is
the first to include operation over non-ocean surfaces as one of its
design requirements. The increased capabilities of the instrument allo
w for the generation of a variety of data products. The generation of
these products calls for an extensive suite of software covering the p
rocessing of the raw data into basic 'waveform products', and the subs
equent generation of higher level, geophysical products covering ocean
, sea-ice, land-ice, land and lakes. This paper gives an overview of t
he ERS-1 altimeter data processing carried out at the U.K. Earth Obser
vation Data Centre (EODC) at Farnborough. Besides processing the data
from the satellite, a significant quantity of support data also have t
o be acquired and processed (e.g., improved orbit ephemerides, meteoro
logical data, ionospheric data, etc.). The initial low-level processin
g of the raw data into the Waveform Foundation Product is common to al
l altimeter data products and is described in detail.