The doctoral dissertations of the former Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and Aalto University Schools of Technology (CHEM, ELEC, ENG, SCI) published in electronic format are available in the electronic publications archive of Aalto University - Aaltodoc.
Aalto

Development, Calibration and Applications of Polarimetric Microwave Radiometers for Remote Sensing

Andreas Colliander

Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology to be presented with due permission of the Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering for public examination and debate in Auditorium S4 at Helsinki University of Technology (Espoo, Finland) on the 26th of October, 2007, at 12 noon.

Overview in PDF format (ISBN 978-951-22-8896-0)   [1379 KB]
Dissertation is also available in print (ISBN 978-951-22-8895-3)

Abstract

This doctoral thesis describes (1) the development and calibration principles of a fully polarimetric radiometer, which is developed for the reference radiometer of a spaceborne synthetic aperture radiometer; (2) a study of an improvement of the most important application of the polarimetric radiometry, maritime wind vector measurement; (3) and a numerical simulation method for modeling the electromagnetic radiation from ocean surface.

The fundamental part of passive microwave remote sensing is the development of the measurement instruments, radiometers. Over the past two decades significant amount of work has been focused on the development of so-called interferometric synthetic aperture radiometry. The first spaceborne radiometer using aperture synthesis is scheduled for launch in 2008. This radiometer operates at 1.4 GHz and aims for global measurement of soil moisture and ocean salinity; hence, the mission is named as SMOS. This radiometer and its airborne prototype use reference radiometers for calibration purposes. The development and calibration of both of these polarimetric reference radiometers is described in this work; they provide accurate enough measurements to calibrate the noise distribution network and absolute average brightness temperature, while being a part of the receiver constellation of the synthetic aperture radiometer.

For the applications of polarimetric radiometry, the main focus over the past two decades has been the measurement of the maritime wind vector. In this work, a set of measurements is analyzed in order to solve the incidence angle dependency of the wind vector measurements. The results show clear dependency for all measured parameters, and a model for the dependency is introduced. As a part of this study, a theoretical method for calculation of scattering from dielectric rough surface, like ocean surface, was also developed. This method can be used for simulation of the wind vector measurements in any kind of ocean surface conditions. The feasibility and efficiency of the method for this purpose is demonstrated.

This thesis consists of an overview and of the following 6 publications:

  1. I. Corbella, F. Torres, A. Camps, A. Colliander, M. Martín-Neira, S. Ribó, K. Rautiainen, N. Duffo, M. Vall-llossera, MIRAS End-to-End Calibration: Application to SMOS L1 Processor, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1126-1134, May 2005. © 2005 IEEE. By permission.
  2. A. Colliander, S. Tauriainen, T. Auer, J. Kainulainen, J. Uusitalo, M. Toikka, M. T. Hallikainen, MIRAS Reference Radiometer: A Fully Polarimetric Noise Injection Radiometer, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 1135-1143, May 2005. © 2005 IEEE. By permission.
  3. A. Colliander, L. Ruokokoski, J. Suomela, K. Veijola, J. Kettunen, V. Kangas, A. Aalto, M. Levander, H. Greus, M. T. Hallikainen, J. Lahtinen, Development and Calibration of SMOS Reference Radiometer, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 1967-1977, July 2007. © 2007 IEEE. By permission.
  4. A. Colliander, J. Kettunen, M. T. Hallikainen, Calibration of End-to-End Phase Imbalance of Polarimetric Radiometers, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 44, no. 10, pp. 2635-2641, October 2006. © 2006 IEEE. By permission.
  5. A. Colliander, J. Lahtinen, S. Tauriainen, J. Pihlflyckt, J. Lemmetyinen, M. T. Hallikainen, Sensitivity of Airborne 36.5-GHz Polarimetric Radiometer's Wind-Speed Measurement to Incidence Angle, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 2122-2129, July 2007. © 2007 IEEE. By permission.
  6. A. Colliander, P. Ylä-Oijala, Electromagnetic Scattering from Rough Surface Using Single Integral Equation and Adaptive Integral Method, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 3639-3646, December 2007. © 2007 IEEE. By permission.

Keywords: polarimetric radiometry, radiometer, calibration, remote sensing, wind, rough surface scattering

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© 2007 Helsinki University of Technology

Last update 2011-05-26