Simulating passive microwave radiometer designs using Simulink

Abstract

The authors have developed a simulation system for a passive microwave radiometer using MATLAB and SIMULINK from The MathWorks, Inc. The system comprises a high-level block diagram simulation for a modern instrument, the Scanning Low Frequency Microwave Radiometer, or SLFMR. The hardware prototype SLFMR, which was designed to map sea surface salinity, was implemented using the classic pulsed noise injection Dicke radiometer design. A suite of lower-level user-written components arranged in user block libraries has also been developed. The simulations functionally model the signal flow of the prototype, with random fluctuations representing the equivalent noise temperature of various signals propagating through the system, so the fundamental physics of random noise processes are preserved. Examples of several simulations are presented, and the computational feasibility, performance, and possible enhancements are assessed.