Microwave aperture synthesis radiometry: Paving the path for sea surface salinity measurement from space

Abstract

This chapter summarises the main objectives and characteristics of the ESA’s SMOS mission and its remote sensing applications. The SMOS payload is MIRAS, a new type of instrument in Earth observation: the first two-dimensional aperture synthesis interferometric radiometer. It operates at L-band, has multi-angular and multi-look imaging capabilities, and can be operated in dual-polarisation or full-polarimetric modes. Due to its novelty, the principles of operation, imaging characteristics and its main performance parameters (spatial resolution and radiometric sensitivity and accuracy) are described, as well as the approach selected in the retrieval algorithms of sea surface salinity