On Aperture Synthesis of Microwave Radiometer Demonstrator for Airborne 2-D L-Band and Ocean Aviation Applications

Sea surface salinity (SSS) is a fundamental parameter for understanding ocean phenomena and plays a vital role in studying global climate change and weather prediction models. Following the earlier launch of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS), Aquarius, and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellites, the Chinese Ocean Salinity and Soil Moisture Mission (COSM) was successfully launched on November 14, 2024. The launched satellite is equipped with the 2-D L-band Aperture Synthesis Microwave Radiometer (LASMR) and the Microwave Imager Combined Active and Passive (MICAP) components to gather high-precision SSS information. This paper presents the Airborne LASMR (ALASMR), which features a Y-shaped two-dimensional synthetic aperture microwave radiometer and contains 11 antenna units with a unit spacing of 0.82λ. The ground test investigations of the ALASMR have been conducted to evaluate antenna patterns, test the sensitivity of receiving channels, and conduct ocean aviation experiments. To examine the flight observation, uniform salinity is assumed for the sea area obtained from the calibration platform of National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS) whereas the salinity gradient is taken for the Laizhou Bay area. The ALASMR exhibits enhanced imaging performance, with a spatial resolution of about 0.35 km and a width of about 1.24 km at the flight altitude of 1.2 km. The retrieval of SSS in the sea area of the ocean calibration platform is also demonstrated in this work. This indicates that ALASMR can reliably execute salinity observation of near-shore with high precision and provide a cross-calibration data source for COSM after its launch.