An incidence angle correction for a conical scanning microwave radiometer

The Ka-band conically-scanning, two-look airborne microwave radiometer (C-STAR) was developed by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center to investigate a new polarimetric remote sensing technique for inferring ocean surface winds (speed and direction). During C-STAR flight testing, unwanted systematic errors in ocean brightness temperatures, caused by changes in aircraft attitude, were observed. In this paper, we present results of a data processing procedure used to remove these unwanted effects by correcting airborne microwave ocean brightness temperatures for incidence angle changes caused by aircraft attitude (roll and pitch) variations during flight. Experimental verification of the incidence angle normalization is presented using measured data.