The Sentinel-3 Altimetry User Guide provides a high level description of the available instrument operating modes and products. It also covers an introduction to relevant application areas, product types, processing levels, resolutions, coverage, product formatting and software tools available from ESA.

The categories are:

• Overview
  Gives a brief description of the altimetry principles, precursor missions, operating modes and the geophysical parameters measured.
• Applications
  The main application of the Sentinel-3 topography mission is the study of ocean topography including mean sea level, wave height, wind speed over the surface, sea-ice, ocean currents, Kelvin and Rossby waves, eddies and tides.
• Product Types
  Describes the three types of Sentinel-3 altimetry products as well as the latency products (Near Real-Time, Short Time Critical or Non-Time Critical).
• Processing Levels
  Illustrates the processing steps from Level-0 to Level-2 of Sentinel-3 altimetry products.
• Resolutions
  Defines the transmitting pattern, sampling and resolution cells of the Sentinel-3 altimetry mission.
• Coverage
  Describes the geographical coverage, orbit characteristics and revisit time.
• Naming Conventions
  Describes the data naming conventions used for the Level-1 and Level-2 altimetry products made available to users.
• Data Formats
  Outlines the format of the Level-1 and Level-2 products: netCDF and SAFE.
• Data Access
  Describes data access to Sentinel-3 data.
• Definitions
  Provides information on definitions, units and conventions used in Sentinel-3 altimetry mission.

For an in-depth description of the Sentinel-3 mission altimetry products and algorithms and details of the SRAL instrument and its performance, refer to the Sentinel-3 Altimetry Technical Guide. The Technical Guide provides a point of engagement for ESA and the SENTINEL technical user community. The detailed information available in the Technical Guide is intended for users such as academics and industrial software engineers who have previous experience of similar EO missions, and in-depth experience of data manipulation and management.