Ultra-High Performance C & L-Band Radiometer System for Future Spaceborne Ocean Missions

A next generation spaceborne radiometer system for hi-quality ocean measurements is discussed. Instead of a classical horn, a focal plane array is used as antenna feed. The antenna beam is created by adding the outputs from many small antenna elements, thus providing an antenna beam of unsurpassed quality. This solves the classical polarization purity and land/sea contamination issues. The concept requires many microwave receivers and fast analog-to-digital converters as well as fast digital signal processing on-board the satellite. This is discussed, and resource budgets, especially concerning power, are provided.