Synthesis of thinned planar arrays with two-fold redundancy for microwave interferometric radiometers

The synthesis of thinned planar arrays with two-fold redundancy in microwave interferometric radiometers (MIRs) is discussed. Based on (double) difference bases, a deterministic method is proposed for constructing two-fold redundancy planar arrays (TFRPAs). The resulting TFRPAs sample the spatial frequencies at least twice within a given baseline coverage, which contributes to the reliability of MIR systems. A comparative study with two typical TFRPAs (i.e. the open-ended ‘Cross’ and the closed ‘ ◻ ’ array configurations) is carried out, concerning array sampling efficiency in the spatial frequency domain. The numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed synthesis method.