Digital beamforming analysis and performance for a digital L-band Pseudo-correlation radiometer

The Passive Advanced Unit (PAU) for ocean monitoring is a novel instrument that combines, in a single receiver and without time multiplexing, a microwave radiometer at L-band (PAU-RAD) and a GPS-reflectometer (PAU-GNSS/R). These two sensors together with an infra-red radiometer (PAU-IR) will simultaneously provide the sea surface temperature and the sea state information needed to accurately retrieve sea surface salinity. This paper presents the developed PAU-RAD hardware and software that will allow to obtain a digital radiometer with digital beamformer. After the introduction to the PAU concept presented in section 1, in secton 2 the concept of Digital Beamforming is detailed. Section 3 is devoted to the developement of PAU-RAD and, finally, the main conclusions of this work are resumed in section 4.