THE PROCESSING OF HEXAGONALLY SAMPLED SIGNALS WITH STANDARD RECTANGULAR TECHNIQUES - APPLICATION TO 2-D LARGE-APERTURE SYNTHESIS INTERFEROMETRIC RADIOMETERS

In Earth observation programs there is a need of passive low frequency (L-band) measurements to monitor soil moisture and ocean salinity wit h high spatial resolution 10-20 Km, a radiometric resolution of 1K and a revisit time of 1-3 days [1], Compared to total power radiometers a perture synthesis interferometric radiometers are technologically attr active because of their reduced mass and hardware requirements, In thi s field it should be mentioned the one-dimensional (1-D) linear interf erometer ESTAR developed by NASA [2] and MIRAS a two-dimensional (2-D) Y-shaped interferometer currently under study by European Space Agenc y (ESA) [3]. Interferometer radiometers measure the correlation betwee n pairs of nondirective antennas, Each complex correlation is a sample of the ''visibility'' function which, in the ideal case, is the spati al Fourier transform of the brightness temperature distribution, Since most receiver phase and amplitude errors can be hardware calibrated, Fourier based iterative inversion methods will be useful when antenna errors are small, their radiation voltage patterns are not too differe nt, and mutual coupling is small, In order to minimize on-board hardwa re requirements-antennas, receivers and correlators-the choice of the interferometer array shape is of great importance since it determines the (u, v) sampling strategy and the minimum number of visibility samp les required for a determined aliasing level, In this sense, Y-shaped and triangular-shaped arrays with equally spaced antennas are optimal, The main contribution of this paper is a technique that allows us to process the visibility samples over the hexagonal sampling grids given by Y-shaped and triangular-shaped arrays with standard rectangular FF T routines, Since no interpolation processes are involved, the risk of induced artifacts in the recovered brightness temperature over the wi de field of view required in Earth observation missions is minimized a nd signal to noise ratio (SNR) is preserved.