A New Microwave Radiometer Simultaneously Receiving Dual-Polarized Radiation

A new cost-effective microwave radiometer has been designed for simultaneously receiving both vertically and horizontally polarized thermal radiation, which are important signals for improving the capability of passive remote observations of geophysical phenomena. It is basically a Dicke-switched superheterodyne receiver whose both polarization channels share a single set of a reference noise source, a low-noise microwave amplifier, and a mixer with a local oscillator by adopting a scheme that both channels are slightly spaced in receiving frequency. A 15-GHz band radiometer has been built and tested for the verification of this scheme.