Analysis and Correction of Antenna Pattern Errors for In-Orbit Fully Polarimetric Aperture Synthesis Radiometer

The fully polarimetric aperture synthesis radiometer (FPASR) is capable of acquiring the fully polarimetric brightness temperature (BT), which has become increasingly significant in remote sensing. Antenna pattern errors can introduce significant errors to the reconstructed image of the FPASR. Analyzing and correcting the antenna pattern errors is crucial for obtaining high-quality BT images. In this paper, the antenna pattern errors are analyzed and classified into additive and multiplicative errors. A two-step correction method is proposed to reduce the influence of antenna pattern errors on the reconstructed BT. An end-to-end simulator for FPASR has been developed to assess both the antenna pattern errors and the effectiveness of the correction method. The simulation results show that the two-step correction method can reduce the brightness temperature error caused by the antenna pattern errors by over 70%. The successful image of the flight experiment validates the correction method as well.