Capabilities and limitations of adaptive canceling for microwave radiometry

Radio frequency interference (RFI) limits the sensitivity of microwave radiometry by limiting the usable bandwidth and effective integration time of measurements. Adaptive canceling techniques offer a look-through capability that can potentially ease these constraints. In this paper, empirical arguments are used to determine the best possible attenuation of RFI for any canceler. Some field results using two different canceling methods are presented and shown to be consistent with this performance bound.