| The Cryosat-2 Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL) altimeter is the first altimeter that can operate in three different modes over the ocean: the classical pulse limited LRM, the Delay Doppler or SAR and the SAR Interferometric modes. It offers a unique opportunity to test, validate and compare the capabilities of the three modes for the detection and analysis of small icebergs (<3 km in length) already demonstrated for classical altimeters. Over most of the sea-ice free ocean, SIRAL operates in LRM mode and the classical iceberg detection algorithm can be applied without modification. It can also be applied to the Reduced SAR or pseudo-LRM data computed from SAR and SARin data. In SAR mode, iceberg signatures are bright spots in... |
