An Ultra Wide-Band Radar Altimeter for Ice Sheet Surface Elevation and Snow Cover Over Sea Ice Measurement

The Ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass at a rapid rate and there has been significant decrease in sea ice volume over the last few years. CryoSat-II with optimized radar altimeter for ice-sheet and sea ice surface elevation measurements is launched. We developed ultra wide-band FM-CW radar that operates over the frequency range from 13-17 GHz for airborne measurements. The radar is designed to provide high-resolution surface-elevation data and also map near surface layers in polar firn with high precision. It is designed to generate an ultra linear transmit chirp using a fast settling PLL with a reference signal from Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS). The pulse length of the transmit chirp is 240-us and pulse repetition frequency is 2-KHz. The peak transmit power of the system is 100-mW, radiated using horn antennas. The radar was deployed in Greenland and Antarctica in 2009-10 as a part of Operation Ice Bridge campaign to collect data in conjunction with other instruments including Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) and Digital Mapping System Camera (DMS). The radar also collected data under the Cryosat-II path. This paper will provide an overview of the Ku-Band radar design along with results from the 2009-2010 field campaigns. The data collected over polar firn shows near surface internal layers down to a depth of about 15-m with a resolution of 15-cm. When flying over sea ice the radar provides snow cover thickness data to a depth of about 0.5-m. Even over highly crevassed areas, such as outlet glaciers, the radar is able to detect large surface elevation changes of a few tens of meters with high resolution.