The impact of the number of bits in digital beamforming real aperture and synthetic aperture radiometers

This work analyzes the number of bits required in a digital radiometer with beamforming focusing on the integration time and on the relationship between the signalpsilas standard deviation and the ADC conversion window. Results are obtained from a particular topology (PAU-SEOSAT/INGENIO [1]), but can be applied to any digital radiometer and to future synthetic aperture radiometers missions.