Self characterization of modelling parameters for synthetic aperture imaging radiometers

It is now well established that Synthetic Aperture Imaging Radiometers (SAIR) promise to be powerful sensors for high-resolution observations of the Earth at low microwave frequencies. Within this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) is currently developing the SMOS mission. The propagation of modelling errors within a reconstruction process that attempts to retrieve the brightness temperature of a scene under observation from interferometric measurements depends on the knowledge of the values of the parameters involved in the modelling of the instrument. This contribution describes an approach to characterize these modelling parameters, once the instrument has been launched into space, with an accuracy such that the propagation of errors through the reconstruction process is still under control.