High Frequency Airborne Radiometer Instrument for the Support of Future Altimetry Missions

• Country: Netherlands
• Summary: High Frequency Airborne Radiometer Instrument for the Support of Future Altimetry Missions
• NLT Ref No: 95078639
• Deadline: 20 Mar 2024
• Financier: Other Funding Agencies
• Purchaser Ownership: Government
• Tender Value: Refer Document
• Notice Type: Tender
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• Description:
• Tenders are invited for High Frequency Airborne Radiometer Instrument for the Support of Future Altimetry Missions Satellite altimetry plays an essential role in producing sea level and waves products such as sea surface height (SSH), significantwave height (SWH), mean sea level and near surface wind/wave products.Today, a low frequency channel microwave radiometer is in general used to correct the altimeter range for water vapor path delay over ocean. The wet tropospheric correction (WTC) is consideredas one of the largest source of uncertainty in sea level estimate. As any artificial temporal drift in the wet tropospheric correction translate immediately to a similar drift in the mean sea level, there is a need for extremely well calibrated radiometer instrument to retrieve this wet tropospheric correction in support of the accurate altimeter measurement. Depending on the targeted temporal and spatial scales, some recent studies and projects ("Radiometer Instrument for Swath Altimeter missions", Sentinel-6 HRMR instrument, Sentinel-3 NG-T) have shown that the two existing classes of satellite altimeters such as the conventional nadir looking altimeters and the wide swath altimeters would both benefit from the addition of one or several high frequency channels (89/165/172 GHz)to the low frequency channels (18.7/23.8/36.5(or 31.4) GHz) already used for the WTC retrieval. The advantages brought by the addition of the high frequency channels in the microwave radiometer are several fold. For a given RF radiating aperture, the high frequency radiometer would exhibit a high spatial resolution and therefore shall be less prone to land contamination in coastal areas that would directly impact the uncertainty of the WTC based on brightness temperature measurement near the coastline. For wide swath altimeters, a multibeam microwave radiometer combining the low and high frequency channels would help to retrieve the WTC across-track with an increased accuracy and with better spatial resolution commensurate with the high spatial resolution radar retrievals from a swath altimeter. Moreover, the high frequency channels (typically 89 GHz or 165/172 GHz) can provide additional information for precipitation screening.This new proposed activity aims at developing an airborne demonstrator instrument to validate the benefits of thehigh frequency radiometer measurement, to support the continued improvement of the altimeter measurement and observation capabilities. The activity shall start with the detailed analysis of user requirements and the design of the instrument, then continue with themanufacturing, integration and test of the airborne system and finally concludes with the airworthiness certification on an airborne carrier and a functional test flight to validate the airborne radiometer function and performance and collect first experimental data
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