Error characteristics of the SIR resolution enhancement algorithm

To improve the utility of the scatterometer for land and ice studies, the Scatterometer Image Reconstruction (SIR) resolution enhancement algorithm has been developed to exploit the frequent overlapping coverage provided by the scatterometer. The authors examine the effects of feature motion on SIR imagery and show the similarity of SIR motion imagery to low pass filtered truth images. Also, resolution improvement is qualified by examining radiometric accuracy as a function of spatial frequency. The SIR algorithm applied to ERS-1 scatterometer data provides a 33% gain in radiometric accuracy when compared to simple image reconstruction of raw scatterometer data.