Optimization of airborne antenna geometry for ocean surface scatterometric measurements

Abstract

We consider different antenna configurations, ranging from simple X-configuration to multi-beam star geometries, for airborne scatterometric measurements of the wind vector near the ocean surface. For all geometries, track-stabilized antenna configurations, as well as horizontal transmitter and receiver polarizations, are considered. The wind vector retrieval algorithm is generalized here for an arbitrary star geometry antenna configuration and tested using the Ku-Band geophysical model function. Using Monte Carlo simulations for the fixed total measurement time, we show explicitly that the relative wind speed estimation accuracy barely depends on the chosen antenna geometry, while the maximum wind direction retrieval error reduces moderately with increasing angular resolution, although at the cost of increased retrieval algorithm computational complexity, thus, limiting online analysis options with onboard equipment. Remarkably, the simplest X-configuration, while the simplest in terms of hardware implementation and computational time, appears an outlier, yielding considerably higher maximum retrieval errors when compared to all other configurations. We believe that our results are useful for the optimization of both hardware and software design for modern airborne scatterometric measurement systems based on tunable antenna arrays especially, those requiring online data processing.