Mònica Roca (isardSAT, Spain); Cristina Martin-Puig (isardSAT, Spain); Albert Garcia (isardSAT, Spain); Roger Escola (isardSAT, Spain)

Using techniques of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) it is possible to partition the radar beam formed by the antenna into a set of much narrower beams.  As a target passes the radar platform it is imaged by each of these beams in turn. By combining these multiple looks at the target it is possible to reduce the speckle noise of the image. Through a Jason-CS funded contact with ESTEC/ESA, isardSAT has developed a new method of combining the single looks of a SAR altimeter signal that significantly improves the SNR compared with the standard multi-look method.