Abstract
The soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) satellite has provided for about ten years systematic passive L -band measurements from space. For several months, phase 0 studies are conducted by the French space agency for a second-generation high resolution (HR) follow-on mission. This contribution is making the connection between this SMOS hr project and the SMOS mission by revisiting the following problematic: the impact of the disparity of the antenna patterns on the reconstruction floor error observed in the retrieved brightness temperatures. This impact is revisited in light of the progress made since that time and a new metric is introduced for estimating the disparity between antenna patterns. It would be helpful for the design of future missions based on imaging by aperture synthesis with interferometric arrays comprising a large number of antennas.
Highlights
T HE soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) space mission [1] was launched in November 2009 by ESA and CNES and for almost a decade this first-generation satellite has provided accurate radiometric brightness temperature maps with a spatial resolution of ∼ 50 km at L-band
None of them has been specially designed for large datasets [28] like those involved in imaging radiometry by aperture synthesis (SMOS is equipped with 69 antennas [7], preliminary design studies of SMOShr are using 231 antennas [9])
A new metric has been introduced for estimating the disparity between voltage patterns of large data sets of antennas, like those involved in imaging radiometry by aperture synthesis
Summary
T HE soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) space mission [1] was launched in November 2009 by ESA and CNES and for almost a decade this first-generation satellite has provided accurate radiometric brightness temperature maps with a spatial resolution of ∼ 50 km at L-band. Phase 0 studies are conducted by the French space agency for a second-generation high resolution (HR) follow-on mission [5] The goal of this SMOShr project is to ensure the continuity of L-band measurements while increasing the spatial resolution to ∼ 10 km, without degrading the radiometric sensitivity and keeping the revisit time of three days unchanged. This work is making the connection between the two generations, the present SMOS and the future SMOShr, by revisiting a problematic that was discovered too late in the SMOS project for being solved in due time This issue concerns the impact of the disparity of the antenna patterns [10] on the reconstruction floor error observed in the retrieved brightness temperatures [11]. It is shown how this new metric would have been useful for detecting those antennas in the interferometric array with a pattern outside a confidence region and which contribute too much to the reconstruction floor error and to the degradation of the mission performances
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