A Study of SMOS RFI Over North America

Author

Aksoy, M. ; Johnson, J.T.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH, USA

Volume

10

Issue

3

fYear

2013

fDate

May-13

Firstpage

515

Lastpage

519

Abstract

The European Space Agency´s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission has been providing L-band brightness temperature observations of the Earth since its launch in November 2009. Radio frequency interference (RFI) is clearly present in SMOS data, and RFI detection and mitigation are a challenging problem. Furthermore, the interferometric nature of SMOS observations can cause RFI artifacts in SMOS measurements. This letter reports an analysis of the characteristics of SMOS RFI in North America, including a study of RFI artifacts and a method for their removal. Polarimetric properties and statistics of the resulting observations after artifact removal are also examined as an initial step in characterizing the “true” RFI sources observed in North America.

Keywords

geophysical techniques; radiofrequency interference; European Space Agency; L-band brightness temperature observations; North America; RFI artifacts; RFI detection; RFI mitigation; SMOS RFI; SMOS data; SMOS observations; Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity mission; artifact removal; polarimetric properties; radio frequency interference; true RFI sources; Accuracy; Brightness temperature; Earth; Geophysical measurements; North America; Pollution measurement; Temperature measurement; Brightness temperature; Stokes parameters; polarimetry; radio frequency interference (RFI);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2012.2211993

Filename

6298931