Array Configuration Design for Mirrored Aperture Synthesis Radiometers Based on Dual-Polarization Measurements

In mirrored aperture synthesis (MAS), the antenna array determines the rank of the transformation matrix connecting the cross-correlations to the cosine visibilities. However, the transformation matrix is rank-deficient, resulting in errors in the reconstructed brightness temperature (BT) image. In this paper, the signal propagations for the vertically polarized wave and horizontally polarized wave are analyzed. Then, the optimization model of the antenna array based on dual-polarization is established. The optimal array configurations are presented, with the corresponding transformation matrices being almost column full ranks. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed optimization model.