Evaluation of MIRAS space borne instrument performance: Snapshot radiometric accuracy and its improvement by means of pixel averaging

In the last years aperture synthesis interferometric radiometers have received a special attention by space agencies as a feasible solution to passive monitoring of the Earth at low frequencies (L-band), where classical total power radiometers would require heavy steerable antennas to meet the spatial resolution requirements (10-20 Km), from a low polar orbit. While the performance of such instruments is well known in the radioastronomy field, its application to Earth remote sensing is quite new. The study of different array structures, system errors, calibration and inversion methods and instrument global performance requires the implementation of a simulator of a two-dimensional space borne interferometric radiometer. It allows us to analyze not only its snap shot radiometric accuracy, but also its improvement by means of pixel averaging, that is, the averaging of the common pixels recovered in a sequence of consecutive brightness temperature images. The simulations performed use the system parameters of the planned MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis) instrument, a Y-shaped array with 43 antennas per arm spaced 0.89 lambda, currently under study by the European Space Agency.