Chapter 1
RA2/MWR Products User Guide

This User Guide is published to provide in-depth information to Users of ENVISAT RA2 and MWR data products format and their contents. This document provides also information on the instruments, the principle of the measurement and the main algorithm used in the processing chains.

Section 1 presents an overview of the geophysical measurement and provides information on the radar altimeter and the microwave instruments and their applications in oceanography as well as for ice sheet and sea-ice.

Section 2 describes the definition and the convention used for the data products and presents the main processing algorithms used to produce them. This section describes also the different kind of data that corresponds to different application. For each of them the format is given

Section 3 presents in detail the RA-2 and MWR instruments

Section 4 gives the most frequently asked question

Section 5 concerns the glossary

Section 6 gives in detail the RA2 and MWR data formats products (Level 0, Level1b, Level2, FD/I/GDR, I/G/MAR, and SGDR) and the auxiliary data file.