RADIO FREQUENCY INTERFERENCE MITIGATION IN L-BAND RADIOMETER OF MICROWAVE IMAGER COMBINED ACTIVE AND PASSIVE (MICAP)

Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a significant limiting factor in the retrieval of geophysical parameters measured by microwave radiometers. Microwave Imager Combined Active and Passive (MICAP), which is a package of active and passive microwave instruments including L/C/K-band Microwave Interferometric Radiometer (MIR) and L-band scatterometer, has been approved to be taken on-board in the Chinese Ocean Salinity Mission. RFI is a serious threat to MICAP, especially to the L-band MIR. In the first part of this paper, RFI mitigation strategy combined on-board processing and on-ground processing is proposed based on MICAP structure. Secondly, RFI side lobe blanking criteria is proposed to clarify the requirements for on-board RFI detection capabilities, which indicate a trade-off between detection sensitivity and false alarm rate. Thirdly, a verification experiment of RFI mitigation method is demonstrated for on-board RFI detection.