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NASA NTRS · 20260004994

The Hyperspectral Microwave Photonic Instrument (HyMPI) and its NEDT Performance

Victor Torres·Fabrizio Gambini·Priscilla Mohammed·David Robles·Michael Coon·Mark Stephen·Edward Leong·Jeffrey Piepmeier·Antonia Gambacorta·Gary Carter
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Abstract

This work presents an overview of a hyperspectral microwave-photonic spectrometer and demonstrates the system end-to-end noise equivalent delta temperature (NEDT) performance. The system aims at augmenting the remote sensing capability from space, with a focus on the Earth’s planetary boundary layer (PBL) thermal microwave (MW) spectral region (0-200 GHz). Combining a Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) channelizer and an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) spectrometer, the PIC & ASIC (PICASIC) module is capable of processing 40 GHz spectra at hyperspectral (4 MHz) resolution. The photonic technology is agnostic to the spectral region and multiple photonic modules can cover the entire 200 GHz spectrum. Measured results of the end-to-end system NEDT agree with predicted values confirming that the NEDT is primarily dominated by the noise figure of the MW front-end, with the optical link adding no significant noise. The data also demonstrate that a single module enables simultaneous super- and hyper-spectral resolution channel analysis across a 40 GHz range.

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spectrometerremote sensingradiometerplanetary boundary layerphotonic integrated circuitshyperspectral sensorsmicrowave photonicsoptical filters

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Victor Torres, Fabrizio Gambini, Priscilla Mohammed, David Robles, Michael Coon, Mark Stephen, Edward Leong, Jeffrey Piepmeier, Antonia Gambacorta, Gary Carter. 2026-06-01. The Hyperspectral Microwave Photonic Instrument (HyMPI) and its NEDT Performance. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20260004994

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