Abstract
The authors present an analysis of the noise due to finite word length effects for digital Doppler processors (DPP) in radar scatterometers. They analytically derive the roundoff noise-to-signal ratio in the measurement of the radar return signal power. Computer simulations are presented which validate the analytical results. These results can be used in tradeoff studies of hardware design such as the number of bits required at each processing stage. The results presented are currently being used in the design of a DPP for the NASA scatterometer (NSCAT) planned to be launched in 1990.