A digital correlation full-polarimetric microwave radiometer design and calibration

Since the first polarimetric radiometer satellite WindSat was launched on January 6, 2003 [1] and has been working normally until now, microwave polarimetry has demonstrated its ability on retrieving global wind vector [2].The first digital correlation microwave polarimeter was designed in 2001 [3], and digital technology has made a great progress during the last decade. We describe design of a digital-correlation full-polarimetric microwave radiometer system (DPMR), which operates at the same frequencies as WindSat, i.e. 6.8, 10.7, 18.7, 23.8 and 37.0 GHz. A direct digital cross-cerrelation technique is used in the system to produce four Stokes parameters at each frequency simultaneously. The main specifications are list in TABLE 1.