Water Inclination Topography and Technology Experiment

WITTEX, named in honor of E. Witte who in 1878 first discovered the geostrophic current equation, is an acronym for Water Inclination Topography and Technology Experiment. The WITTEX concept consists of three co-planar small-satellite radar altimeters shown in the above figure. The satellites are spaced apart by several hundred kilometers along their orbit. Earth rotation causes their sub-satellite tracks to be laterally separated. The measurements along each set of three near-parallel tracks occur within minutes of each other, so that the cross-track surface gradient can be measured as well as the usual along-track gradient. Hence, two orthogonal components of the surface gradient can be observed, from which can be derived the two-dimensional geostrophic current.

WITTEX-Wide is an evolving concept that replaces the center satellite (DDA 2) with a Wide-Swath Ocean Altimeter being developed at NASA-JPL. For details click on WITTEX-Wide.

Bistatic-WITTEX is a fast evolving concept that employs not only three nadir altimeters, but pairs of bistatic altimeters between adjacent satellites. Thus, for three satellites we have 3 nadir ground tracks and 2 bistatic goundtracks, for a total of 5 ground tracks! These results were presented at IGARSS 2002.