The impact of antenna pattern frequency dependence in aperture synthesis microwave radiometers

The effect of the frequency dependence of the antenna voltage patterns within the bandwidth of an aperture synthesis interferometric radiometer is studied and quantified using actual antenna voltage patterns measured at different frequencies for the first nine receivers of the Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis instrument aboard the European Space Agency's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission. A technique is proposed to mitigate this effect.