The Influence of Antenna Pattern on Faraday Rotation in Remote Sensing at L-band

Faraday rotation is a change in the polarization vector of electromagnetic radiation that occurs as the waves propagate from the Earth surface through the ionosphere to a spaceborne sensor. This change can cause errors in monitoring parameters at the surface such as soil moisture and sea surface salinity and it is an important consideration for radiometers on future missions in space such as NASA's Aquarius mission and ESA's SMOS mission. Two prominent strategies for compensating for Faraday rotation are using a sum of the signal at two polarizations and using the correlation between the signals at the two polarizations. These strategies work for an idealized antenna. This paper evaluates the strategies in the context of realistic antennas such as will be built for the Aquarius radiometer. Realistic antennas will make small differences that need to be included in planning for retrieval algorithms in future missions.