An Airborne Microwave Radiometer System for Soil Moisture Mapping

An Airborne Microwave Radiometer System was developed for remote sensing applications by the Space Research Group of Technical University of Budapest (TUB). The system includes L, S-band microwave and thermal-infra radiometers, which were installed on a light Pilatus-Porter airplane. The main goal of the system is to map immediately soil moisture of large territories with a spatial resolution in order of 10-50 m. This system can be used for the purposes of agriculture, water management and environmental protection. A data processing software was developed in the frame of an Indian-Hungarian cooperation between TUB and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay). Detailed description on the sensors and on data handling/processing system and on results of fligth and field measurements, carried out over agricultural fields in 1988 and 1989, presented in this paper.