Experimental study on radiometric performance of synthetic aperture radiometer hut-2D – Measurements of natural targets

In this paper we describe a study conducted with airborne synthetic aperture radiometer HUT-2D to assess the performance and applicability of the instrument, and to gain practical experience to the performance of aperture synthesis radiometers in general. This is done by addressing several datasets gathered by the instrument when well-known natural targets, such as the Cosmic Microwave Radiation or a sea surface, is measured. We analyze three figures-of-merit, radiometric resolution, pixel-to-pixel bias and random error, from the datasets and make a preliminary demonstration about the stability of some error components.