Table 2.
Requirements on measurement quality organized by baseline measurement technique
| Baseline Measurement Techniques | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sounding | Altimetry | Reflectometry | Interferometry | ||
| Requirements on Measurement Quality | Blind Zone | HF/VHF: <7× vertical resolution from the surface in ice | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Vertical Resolution |
VHF: ≤30 m in ice (finer) in top 3 km HF: ≤300 m in ice to 30 km depth HF/VHF: ≤300 m in ice (coarser) from 3 km to 30 km depth |
N/A | N/A | N/A | |
| Vertical Precision |
VHF: ≤15 m in ice (finer) for top 3 km HF: ≤150 m in ice to 30 km depth HF/VHF: ≤150 m in ice (coarser) from 3 km to 30 km depth |
VHF: ≤15 m in vacuum | N/A | N/A | |
| Along-Track Resolution |
VHF: ≤2 km (finer) HF: ≤5.5 km HF/VHF: ≤10 km (coarser) |
VHF: ≤2 km (finer) HF/VHF: ≤10 km (coarser) |
N/A | N/A | |
| Sampled Along-Track Resolution | N/A | N/A |
VHF: ≤10 km HF: ≤27.5 km |
N/A | |
| Clutter Discrimination | N/A | N/A | N/A | VHF: >10 km for 80% of any groundtrack to 3 km depth | |
| Radiometric Precision | N/A | N/A |
VHF: 1 dB over ≤ 10 km HF: 1 dB over ≤ 27.5 km |
N/A | |
| Radiometric Accuracy | N/A | N/A |
VHF: 1 dB over ≤ 10 km HF: 1 dB over ≤ 27.5 km |
N/A | |
| Radiometric Stability | HF: 2 dB within a flyby in the subsurface | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
*We compare the different resolution requirements provided by the 10 MHz VHF bandwidth and the 1 MHz HF bandwidth using the terms “finer” for a smaller numeric requirement and “coarser” for a large numeric requirement.