Broadband millimeter wave receiver with dual polarization

Receivers with broad frequency bandwidth and low noise provide improved sensitivity for millimeter wave remote sensing and astrophysical observations, because the signal is wideband gaussian noise. For the study of the water cycle and rapidly evolving phenomena, such as hurricanes, the soundings of temperature and humidity profiles of atmosphere are achieved around the resonant frequencies of 118 GHz (oxygen) and 183 GHz (water) correspondingly. We developed a single horn receiver front end that achieved these goals. This broadband single horn receiver is especially beneficial for large interferometric sounding instruments that can now be integrated with only a single array of receivers for both temperature and humidity sounding.