It is well known that real aperture radiometers feature very high snapshot sensitivity, if compared with synthetic aperture radiometers. On the other hand, synthetic aperture interferometric radiometers can provide wide FoV and high spatial resolution thanks to the synthetic aperture processing. Real aperture radiometers may become very attractive from the sensitivity performance point-of-view if a simultaneous multiple beam coverage is achieved in the entire FoV (i.e. both in across-track and in along-track directions).

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BIOMASS, a candidate Earth Explorer mission in Phase A, proposes to measure ice flows over Earth's major ice sheets as a secondary objective in its side-looking observation geometry. On the other hand, P-band ice sounding radar mission concepts have been proposed already for Earth Explorers (e.g. MIMOSA, CARISMA) for obtaining three-dimensional characteristics of ice sheets and underlying bedrock topography.

Photon counting detectors in the SWIR waveband have direct application in the areas of LIDAR missions for greenhouse gas monitoring. This activity will aim at developing a large area single MCT APD and supporting electronics to demonstrate this capability.

In this work, which was managed by GEC-Marconi Research Centre under contract to ESTEC, an investigation has been performed into the temporal variation and contemporality of SAR and optical, high resolution remote sensing data. The primary aim of the study is to investigate the combination of SAR and optical data to determine, in the application areas of the cryosphere and hydrology, the so-called 'synergistic' temporal sampling requirements, i.e.

The project “Evaluation of Algorithms for Retrieval of Rain Rate with Passive Microwave Radiometers” has been carried out by the University of Bremen for the European Space Agency. Three investigations have been completed under this project:

Plastic marine litter is becoming a major environmental concern. Microwaves (MW) have potential for remote detection of floating macroplastics operating from Satellites or Airborne platforms, but very scarce and limited studies exist in the literature using MW. We present the first results of a systematic study on MW scattering of floating low-mass macroplastics at 2-20 GHz frequency band using radar techniques.