Talk: "Calibration Standard for Miniaturized Microwave Satellites".
Abstract
Microwave remote sensing data has become increasingly important for numerical weather and climate forecast. Recent advance in small satellite (CubeSat) platforms has enabled an economical space technology with excellent temporal resolution and sufficient accuracy. CubeSat-based sensors present both opportunities and challenges. One of the challenges is the new on-board calibrator. This talk introduces metamaterial-based microwave absorbers fabricated on printed circuit boards as promising alternatives to traditional, bulky microwave absorbers for the calibration of microwave radiometers for atmospheric remote sensing. Their use is particularly attractive for on-board calibration of sensors on CubeSats and other small satellites. Planar metamaterials can be fabricated with near-unity absorption over a very broad frequency range, and are scalable by tuning the unit cell geometry. Specifically, we describe an approach and initial measurements toward designing a broadband metamaterial emitter operating at millimeter wave sounding channels from 50 GHz – 230 GHz, enabling a thin, cost-effective calibration target for millimeter-wave atmospheric remote sensing.