Extracting ocean surface information from altimeter returns: The deconvolution method

We present an evaluation of the deconvolution method for estimating ocean surface parameters from ocean altimeter waveforms. We show that this method presents a fast, accurate way of determining the ocean surface parameters from noisy altimeter data. Three parameters may be estimated by using this method: the altimeter height error, the ocean surface standard deviation, and the ocean surface skewness. By means of a Monte Carlo experiment, we determine an “optimum” deconvolution algorithm and the accuracies with which the above parameters may be estimated using this algorithm. We then examine the influence of instrument effects, such as errors in calibration and pointing angle estimation, on the estimated parameters. Finally, we use the deconvolution algorithm to estimate height and ocean surface parameters from Seasat data.