Study on sensitivity of interferometric radiometer

Since the late 80´s when interferometric radiometry started to be applied to Earth observation, much literature has addressed the question of radiometric sensitivity of the instrument, but all references are based on a relatively simple system model, where only incident target noise and receiver noise are taken into account. After Corbella presented his more complex equation of the visibilities to include antenna pattern characterization and antenna coupling, a review of the general expression of sensitivity is also necessary to include the impacts of antenna coupling and other system imperfections. This paper concerns about the sensitivity of a microwave imaging interferometric radiometer. By defining a general signal model of the total output of the receiver, the sensitivity is discussed in both redundancy and non-redundancy cases.