Spatial Resolution Enhancement of SMOS Data: A Combined Fourier Wavelet Approach

Different deconvolution algorithms have been developed to explore the possibility of improving the spatial resolution of future Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) products. An exhaustive test of these methods has been performed over brightness temperature images obtained from an upgraded version of the SMOS End-to-end Performance Simulator (SEPS). Particular emphasis is made on the use of Wiener filter derived methods on the Fourier and on the wavelet domain. The possibility of including suitable auxiliary information in the reconstruction process has also been addressed. Results show that with these techniques it is feasible to improve the spatial resolution (DeltaS) of SMOS observations whereas preserving its radiometric sensitivity (DeltaT), especially in the areas of the field of view far away from nadir. The product DeltaTmiddotDeltaS can be improved by a 49% over soil pixels and by a 30% over sea pixels.