Spatial biases analysis and mitigation methods in SMOS images

SMOS brightness temperature images show some residual artifacts as a function of spatial directions. Due to having different antenna patterns in each element, even if knowing them perfectly, a minimum reconstruction error inherent to the inversion algorithm exists. On top of that, antenna patterns measurement errors and other effects such as cross-polarization terms, increase the spatial biases. Accurate characterization of these sources of error allows improving the quality of the SMOS images. Good results in this direction are reported.