Component · products

Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL)

Missions → Sentinel-3B (Operational)

Sentinel-3 synthetic-aperture radar altimeter.

SRAL, the Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter, is the Sentinel-3 altimeter used for surface topography measurements.^[1]^[2]^[3] It flies on Sentinel-3B and represents the Sentinel-3 altimeter design flown across the series.^[1]^[3] SRAL uses a 13.575 GHz Ku-band channel for range measurements and a 5.41 GHz C-band channel for dual-band ionospheric correction.^[1]^[2]^[3] After early commissioning, the instrument operates continuously in SAR delay-Doppler mode except for punctual calibration sequences.^[2] Its measurement scope covers ocean and ice topography, significant wave height, wind speed, inland-water hydrology, sea ice, and land-ice thematic products.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Operator pricing

Pricing not publicly listed by operator

Supply chain position

carried by Sentinel-3B

Sources

[1]Sentinel-3 altimetry instruments, SentiWikiagency doc-2026-06-16
[2]Sentinel-3 SRAL/MWR Land User Handbook 2024agency doc2024-01-082026-06-16
[3]WMO OSCAR instrument record: SRALagency doc-2026-06-16

Cite https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/sral Markdown twin → Field definitions → Suggest a correction →

How to cite this page

Plain text

Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL). EO-Atlas, SpectraWorks B.V. https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/sral (CC BY 4.0)

BibTeX

@misc{eoatlas:products:component:sral,
  title = {Synthetic Aperture Radar Altimeter (SRAL)},
  author = {{EO-Atlas}},
  publisher = {SpectraWorks B.V.},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
  url = {https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/sral}
}