Wideband digital signal processing test-BED for radiometric RFI mitigation

RFI is a persistent and growing problem experienced by spaceborne microwave radiometers. Recent missions such as SMOS, SMAP, and GPM have all detected RFI in L, C, X, and K bands. To proactively deal with this issue, microwave radiometers must include digital back-end processors that generate data products that facilitate the detection and excision of RFI from desired brightness temperature measurements. The wideband digital signal processing testbed is a platform that allows rapid development of various RFI detection and mitigation algorithms using digital hardware akin to that which might be used for final spaceflight implementation. On it, we evaluate an improved version of the SMAP RFI Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that utilizes the new complex signal kurtosis algorithm as opposed to the real signal kurtosis that is used on the SMAP radiometer. In addition, we show how we scale the DSP to operate at 8.3 times the bandwidth of the SMAP radiometer for operation in K-band.