On Baseline Weighting for Radiometric Sensitivity Analysis in Microwave Interferometric Radiometry

This letter presents a study on the effects of baseline weighting on the performance of radiometric sensitivity in interferometric aperture synthesis radiometers (IASRs). After a brief review on the computation of radiometric sensitivity, its theoretical lower bound, associated with the concept of coherent gain, is derived. We also draw attention to the performance tradeoffs between radiometric sensitivity and several spatial-domain properties of IASRs from which different weightings can be compared. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the significance of the comparative analysis.