A New Approach of Waveform Re-Tracking for Monitoring Sea Surface Topography in the Strait of Hormuz

Satellite altimetry techniques has many challenges over inland water bodies and coastal area due to none-water reflected pulses which cause waveform corruption. Consequently, standard waveform shape which have been designed for open oceans monitoring are no longer valid in these areas. This makes specially designed new re-tracking algorithm development essential delegated for these regions. In this study apart from available re-trackers in Level-2 data, three other re-tracking approaches including: original waveform, first meaningful sub-waveform and mean waveform per each pass and cycle have compared with the new developed method called maximum correlation with mean waveform. Sentinel-3 (SRAL) altimetry data over Strait of Hormuz located in Persian Gulf during 2016/06/07 to 2019/06/11 examined with the available Tide Gauge (TG) station data record in study area. Analysis of distorted waveform showed that three passes (154, 595, 709) have the highest corruption rates compare to the other available passes in this area (45.92%, 38.6% and 30.97%). Consequently they have been selected for further steps of the study. Sea Surface Topography (SST) time series estimated from with proposed re-tracking approach in terms of RMSE with respect to TG records. Our assessments showed 34 and 29 cm improvement in RMSE for pass 599 and 709 comparing to level-2 data. Overall time series also showed 17 cm improvement in RMSE of SST derived from the proposed approach in compare with level-2 data.

A New Approach of Waveform Re-Tracking for Monitoring Sea Surface Topography in the Strait of Hormuz Keywords:

Satellite Altimetry , Coastal Area , Waveform Re-tracking , Threshold , Maximum Correlation