Sh. Yueh, Estimates of Faraday rotation with passive microwave polarimetry for microwave remote sensing of earth surfaces, IEEE GEOSCI, 38(5), 2000, pp. 2434-2438
Citations number
19
Categorie Soggetti
Eletrical & Eletronics Engineeing
Journal title
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
A technique based on microwave passive polarimetry for the estimates of ion
ospheric Faraday rotation for microwave remote sensing of Earth surfaces is
described. Under the assumption of azimuth symmetry for the surfaces under
investigation, it is possible to estimate the ionospheric Faraday rotation
from the third Stokes parameter of microwave radiation. An error analysis
shows that the Faraday rotation can be estimated with an accuracy of better
than 10 with a space-based L-Band system, and the residual correction erro
rs of linearly polarized brightness temperatures can be less than 0.1 K. it
is suggested that the estimated Faraday rotation angle can be further util
ized to derive the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) with an accurac
y of about 1 TECU = 10(16) electrons-m(-2), which will yield 1 mm accuracy
for the estimate of an ionospheric differential delay at Ku-band. Therefore
, this technique can potentially provide accurate estimates of ionospheric
Faraday rotation, TEC, and differential path delay far applications includi
ng microwave radiometry and scatterometry of ocean salinity and soil moistu
re as well as satellite altimetry of sea surface height. A conceptual desig
n applicable to real aperture and aperture synthesis radiometers is describ
ed for the measurements of the third Stokes parameter.