This data set contains the Ka-band Doppler radar observations collected by the airborne KaRADOC instrument (Principal Investigator: S. Meric, IETR), carried by the SAFIRE ATR-42 plane, during the SUMOS campaign (Principal Investigators: P. Sutherland, LOPS, D. Hauser, LATMOS), which took place in the Bay of Biscay from 2021/02/08 to 2021/03/08.
The KaRADOC radar provides pulse-coherent amplitude/phase observations of the Ka-band backscatter from the sea surface. By changing slightly its carrier frequency, and due to its leaky-wave antenna, it is capable of steering the observation beam in the plane perpendicular to the aircraft flight direction, thus observing the sea surface at varying angles of incidence.
The data set contains 19 directory, one per flight, each containing a number of netCDF data files corresponding to the different legs of each flight. These netcdf files contain the raw I/Q radar observations, together with the ancillary information required to analyze the Doppler shift incurred by Ka-band radiation when backscattering from the sea surface.
This data set is currently not amplitude-calibrated, and is thus not suitable to study the sea surface backscattering cross-section. Work is in progress to provide an updated, amplitude-calibrated version of this data set.
The data are available through FTP or HTTPS; the login and password can be obtained by filling in the format: get credentials at https://forms.ifremer.fr/lops-siam/access-to-esa-skim-iasco-data/
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Level 1 Karadoc data from SUMOS campaign