Advanced processing of altimetry Cassini radar data

Abstract

The Cassini RADAR is a Ku band multimode instrument capable of providing topography information of Titan's surface when operating in altimetry mode. During the last six years (January 2005 to 2011) Cassini has performed 71 Titan's fly-bys and several observations have been collected in Altimetry mode. These profiles have shown Titan's surface complexity. Along track profile resolution can be improved by processing data in a coherent approach. This paper describes an advanced processing applied to the raw Altimetric Cassini radar data (LBDR, Long Burst Data Record). The processing is based on the well known Doppler/Delay algorithm. Results show an improvement respect to the existing ABDR (Altimeter Burst Data Record) products in terms of along track resolution and SNR.