A unified microwave radiative transfer model with Jacobian for general planar stratified media

We present herein a new unified microwave radiative transfer (UMRT) model for accurate, fast and stable calculation of thermal radiation from any geophysical medium comprised of planar multilayer spherical scatterers of arbitrary electrical size. UMRT combines several a unique features from classical discrete ordinate radiative transfer theory and dense media radiative transfer theory under the DOTLRT framework for calculating the thermal radiation from either sparse or dense media. Other important features of UMRT include the inherent stability and high efficiency of matrix calculations for both the brightness temperatures and associated Jacobians, application of the reduced Mie and DMRT-QCA phase matrices, incorporation of linear radiation and temperature profiles within each layer, and use of the critical angle and Fresnel effects at layer interfaces.