APERTURE SYNTHESIS CONCEPTS IN MICROWAVE REMOTE-SENSING OF THE EARTH

Aperture synthesis concepts have been used for many years in radio astronomy to achieve high image resolution at a reasonable cost. The time has come for earth remote sensing technology to consider some of these techniques to meet the cost challenges of large antennas in space for these and other applications. The electronically scanned thinned array radiometer is put forward as a viable alternative to improve spatial resolution by an order of magnitude over what is presently achieved by microwave imaging systems that are collecting data from earth orbit.