A Separated Thinned Array Concept for Remote Sensing of Antarctic Ice Sheet Temperature

We present a concept for L band remote sensingof Antarctic ice sheet temperature using a separated thinnedinterferometric array. This concept leverages the relative stabilityof ice sheet thermal emission over long periods of time togradually assemble a collection of array baselines which arejointly transformed to develop large image facets. From anassessment of feasibility, we determine that such a system ispossible for achieving 1-10 kilometer spatial resolution overmonthly to yearly timescales with as few as 10-20 elements; evenfewer elements are required for sensing the ice sheet center. Theimage reconstruction problem is posed as a data constraint inthe Fourier domain with an total variational regularization in theimage domain. We use ice sheet thermomechanical and radiativetransfer modeling to develop realistic ice sheet images, and theseimages are used in observing system simulations to demonstratethe proposed approach.