Given the interferometric characteristics of SMOS, SMOS snapshots are full-polarization brightness temperatures rendered on a hexagonal grid (the so-called synthetic antenna). In fact, what the instrument actually measures are the cross-correlations of all pairs of receivers, from which a visibility function can be derived. The vector of visibilities is linearly related to brightness temperatures TB by means of a reconstruction matrix G. Due to the imperfect knowledge of the matrix G, the difficulties to invert such a big matrix together with some aliasing effects, spurious spatial correlations on brightness temperature snapshots are induced. BEC team is investigating the scope of such correlations. The shape of the found correlations reveals a clear geometrical pattern.
 a) X polarization correlation pattern. Correlation of the central point with the rest of the synthesized scene |
 b) Real part of XY polarization correlation pattern. Correlation of the central point with the rest of the synthesized scene |
 c) X polarization correlation pattern. Correlation of a point located in the edge of AF-FOV with the rest of the synthesized scene |
 d) X polarization correlation pattern. Correlation of a point beyond the horizon with the rest of the synthesized scene |
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Figure 1.- Correlation patterns for different polarizations and antenna points. Patterns corresponding to polarization Y and to the imaginary part of cross polarization are similar to those corresponding to X polarization (figures 1.a, 1.c and 1.d) and real part of cross polarization respectively (figure 1.b). |
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