How to provide L-band 1-km spatial resolution with radiometer at 800-km height with acceptable cost is a question still being explored. This article proposes a two-element band sampling 1-D imaging… Click to show full abstract
How to provide L-band 1-km spatial resolution with radiometer at 800-km height with acceptable cost is a question still being explored. This article proposes a two-element band sampling 1-D imaging microwave radiometer. The band sampling principle uses the spatial phase item exp($jkr$ ) by letting wavenumber $k$ be a variable and letting range $r$ be a constant, and then performs beam forming with inverse Fourier transformation. The two-element band sampling 1-D imaging microwave radiometer requires only two elements to perform 1-D imaging, and the length of the baseline does not affect the number of necessary elements. The interferometric synthesis aperture radiometer requires a large number of elements if the baseline is long, but the band sampling radiometer requires only two elements at any baseline length. Theoretical analysis shows that when the required L-band spatial resolution is 1 km at 800-km height, using a simple two satellite tandem formation as the carrying platform, the two-element band sampling radiometer may require much less elements than the interferometric synthesis aperture radiometer does to provide along-track high spatial resolution.
