Technology Progress on the Hyperspectral Microwave Photonic Instrument (HyMPI)

The 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey recommended that NASA create a new Incubation Program to explore and develop new technologies to probe the Earth’s planetary boundary layer (PBL) by 2027. In response to this initiative, our team at Goddard Space Flight Center has initiated the development of a hyperspectral microwave sensor. Hyperspectral evaluation of the microwave spectra will enable more precise characterization of the state of the atmosphere in this key region. Our instrument, the hyperspectral microwave photonic instrument (HyMPI,) is being developed to make wideband (~40-GHz,) high-resolution (~20-MHz) measurements of the thermal microwave spectrum. This is key to gain a consistent measurement with improved information content in key, highly uncertain variables determining the Earth’s radiation budget such as the water vapor continuum, surface emissivity, hydrometeor microphysics and the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) thermodynamics with implications for numerical weather prediction and climate science. Our instrument employs photonic integrated circuits (PICs) to enable the parallel processing of the wideband microwave signal. The use of PIC technology has the potential to improve measurement performance and reduce instrument size, mass and power. Our approach uses an electro-optic modulator to encode the microwave spectra onto an optical signal and then uses photonics to process and channelize the signal. We will present our instrument architecture, development progress and component and system-level performance.