Geolocation of RFI sources with sub-kilometric accuracy from SMOS interferometric data

Abstract

Abstract The SMOS mission is a European Space Agency project aimed at global monitoring of surface Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity from radiometric L-band observations. Although the L-band is a protected band, the data collected by SMOS are contaminated by radio frequency interferences (RFI) which degrade the performance of the mission. A precise location of the RFI emitters is required for switching off illegal transmissions or for fixing malfunctioning equipments. This work is concerned with the geolocation of such sources with a sub-kilometric accuracy from SMOS interferometric data themselves. Such a precise location has never been reached by any other published methods using only SMOS measurements.