Geographical reference adjustment of MTVZA-GYa satellite microwave radiometer frequency channels 52–91 GHz

Abstract

In this paper, we present a description of the method for adjusting the georeference of the “high-frequency” channels of the microwave sounder MTVZA-GYa. Analysis of radiometric measurements at a frequency of 91.65 GHz showed that the lack of horizontal polarization does not allow the use of the generally accepted georeferencing technique. Therefore, an alternative approach/method has been proposed for a group of 52–91 GHz channels that share a common horn. The method is based on the analysis of the features of the spatial distribution of the scattering index, which is an auxiliary function in the problem of restoring precipitation zones from radio polarimetric satellite measurements. The values selected based on the proposed method were: roll (−0.37 ± 0.71)°, pitch (0.21 ± 0.65)° and yaw (−1.21 ± 0.76)°. The accuracy of georeferencing using the indicated angles was 7.62 km. The inclusion of the proposed approach in the procedure for automatically determining the orientation angles of a group of frequency channels 52–91 GHz will help improve the accuracy of their geographic location, as well as the accuracy of solving remote sensing problems using them.