Resolution enhancement of passive microwave images from geostationary Earth orbit via a projective sphere coordinate system

Abstract

A projective sphere coordinate system in a Wiener filter method to improve the performance of resolution enhancement for microwave radiometer data of a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellite is proposed. Because of the impact of Earth's curvature on remote sensing measurement, the footprint of microwave radiometer is varied while scanning, especially in positions far from subsatellite point. The deconvolution technique used in the microwave radiometer measurements from Earth directly is therefore inaccurate because microwave measurement under this situation cannot be considered as a convolution process. To ameliorate the deconvolution method, a projective spherical coordinate system that enforces the footprint of a microwave radiometer invariant on the surface of a spherical coordinate system in measurements is presented in this article. The performance of the projective coordinate system is evaluated by GEO satellite simulated observations. The simulation results show that the proposed method produces better resolution enhancement, especially in the position where the footprint of the microwave radiometer is seriously influenced by Earth curvature. © The Authors.