Cramér-Rao bounds and estimation algorithms for Delay/Doppler and conventional altimetry

Abderrahim Halimi (1) , Corinne Mailhes (1, 2) , Jean-Yves Tourneret (1, 2)

1 IRIT-SC - Signal et Communications
2 Toulouse INP - Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse)

Delay/Doppler radar altimetry has been receiving an increasing interest, especially since the launch of the first altimeter in 2010. It aims at reducing the measurement noise and increasing the along-track resolution in comparison with conventional pulse limited altimetry. A semi-analytical model was recently introduced for this new generation of delay/Doppler altimeters. The first contribution of this paper is the derivation of the Cramér-Rao bounds (CRBs) associated with the parameters of this recent delay/Doppler model. These bounds are then compared with those obtained for conventional altimetry. The second contribution of this paper is the derivation of a new weighted least squares estimator based on the semi-analytical delay/Doppler model. The performance of this estimator is very promising when compared to other more classical estimators and to the corresponding CRBs.

Mots clés: SAR altimetr; Cramer-Rao bounds; Delay/Doppler map; Maximum Likelihood estimation; Least squares estimation

Domaines: Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Traitement des images [eess.IV]; Vision par ordinateur et reconnaissance de formes [cs.CV]; Intelligence artificielle [cs.AI]

Abderrahim Halimi, Corinne Mailhes, Jean-Yves Tourneret. Cramér-Rao bounds and estimation algorithms for Delay/Doppler and conventional altimetry. 21st European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2013), Sep 2013, Marrakech, Morocco. pp.1-5. ⟨hal-01178633⟩