Helsinki University of Technology Synthetic Aperture Radiometer -HUT-2D

Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), Laboratory of Space Technology has developed an airborne two dimensional synthetic aperture radiometer for remote sensing purposes. The radiometer - called HUT-2D — measures the ground target using L-band channel reserved for radio astronomy. Main interests are in soil moisture (SM) and sea surface salinity (SSS) monitoring. The instrument is similar with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) mission MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer by Aperture Synthesis) instrument. The HUT-2D instrument will be used in SMOS mission calibration and validation activities. Already, the development work of the HUT-2D instrument has given valuable information to the SMOS project. This paper describes the instrument and presents example airborne measurements in Finnish coastal zone.