A Simplified Calculation of the Kurtosis for RFI Detection

Microwave radiometers detecting geophysical parameters are susceptible to radio-frequency interference (RFI) from anthropogenic sources. The kurtosis statistic can be a powerful means of identifying some types of low-power RFI, as thermal noise has a distinct kurtosis value of three, while thermal noise contaminated even with low-power nonthermal RFI often has other values of kurtosis. This paper presents a method for calculating the kurtosis and brightness that significantly reduces the radiometer data download requirements.