Impact of the fringe washing function on the spatial resolution and on the radiometric sensitivity of the SMOS instrument

It is now well established that Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radiometers (SAIR) promise to be powerful sensors for high-resolution observations of the Earth at low microwave frequencies. Within this context, the European Space Agency is currently developing the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission. The present work aims to study the errors attributable to the fringe washing function onto the reconstructed brightness temperature map. With the aid of regularized reconstruction methods, it is shown that the spatial resolution and the radiometric sensitivity of the SMOS instrument are little influenced by the fringe wash phenomenon even when the received signal is blurred.