The Swot satellite carries onboard a wide-swath altimeter-interferometer in Ka-Band (KaRIn), a classical nadir-looking altimeter, as well as the usual complement on altimetry satellites: precise location systems and radiometer. 

The core technology for Swot is the KaRIN SAR Radar Interferometer, originally developed from the efforts of the wide swath ocean altimeter (WSOA). KaRIN measures elevations at high precision and spatial resolution. KaRIN is complemented with the following suite of instruments: a Jason-type (C- and Ku-band) nadir-looking conventional altimeter, a three-frequency microwave radiometer, similar to the advanced microwave radiometer (AMR) flown on the ocean surface topography mission (OSTM/Jason-2 & 3), as well as global positioning system (GPS) receivers and a Doris (Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite) transponder for precise orbit determination.