SMAP Radar Processing and Expected Performance

This presentation will describe the processing algorithms being developed for the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) radar data and the expected characteristics of the measured backscattering cross sections. The SMAP radar combines some unique features such as a conically scanned antenna with SAR processing of the data. The rapidly varying squint angle gives the measurements variable resolution and noise characteristics and poses a challenge to the processor to maintain accuracy around the wide (1000 km) swath. Rapid variation of Doppler around the scan leads to a time domain azimuth correlation algorithm, and variation of the Doppler geometry will likely require varying the processing bandwidth to manage ambiguity contamination errors. The basic accuracy requirement is 1-dB (one-sigma) in the backscatter measurements at a resolution of 3 km. The main error contributions come from speckle noise, calibration uncertainty, and radio frequency interference (RFI). Speckle noise is determined by system design parameters and details of the processing algorithms. The calibration of the backscatter measurements will be based on pre-launch characterization of the radar components which allow corrections for short term (~1 month) variations in performance. Longer term variations and biases will be removed using measurements of stable reference targets such as parts of the Amazon rain forest, and possibly the oceans and ice sheets. RFI survey measurements will be included to measure the extent of RFI around the world. The SMAP radar is designed to be able to hop the operating frequency within the 80 MHz allocated band to avoid the worst RFI emitters. Data processing will detect and discard further RFI contaminated measurements. This work is supported by the SMAP project at JPL - CalTech. The SMAP mission has not been formally approved by NASA. The decision to proceed with the mission will not occur until the completion of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. Material in this document related to SMAP is for information purposes only.