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Dr. Omkar Pradhan

Researcher

About

Bio

As a RF/Microwave engineer in the Microwave Systems Technology (MST) group (386F) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) I am mainly involved in the hardware design of millimeter- and submillimeter-wave radiometers, and radars. These instruments are used for atmospheric remote sensing of planetary bodies as well as Earth science.  I was previously a JPL postdoctoral fellow in the Submillimeter Wave Advanced Technologies (SWAT) group (386H).

My research interests include millimeter and sub-millimeter wave active and passive remote sensing technologies, radio wave propagation in random media and synthetic aperture radar design.  

Education

PhD (2019), MS (2013) University of Colorado-Boulder

Research Interests

High Spectral Resolution Radiometry, FMCW Radar, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Signal Processing, MMW/SMMW Technologies, Atmospheric Propagation and Scintillation

Achievements

Awards & Recognitions

  • JPL Voyager Award | For contributions to the successful completion and delivery of the 3 MEM instruments to APL (2024)
  • NASA Award | For the development and airborne demonstration of the Microwave Temperature and Humidity Profiler (MTHP), the first hyperspectral, multi-angle microwave sounder. (2023)
  • JPL Award | Successful operation of the HAMSR instrument in the NASA CPEX-CapeVerde field campaign (2023)
  • JPL Award | For the rapid implementation of 8 GHz digital spectrometer sounder and airborne campaign for planetary boundary layer investigations (2022)

Publications

  1. Shawn Sheng, Omkar Pradhan, Roni Goldshmid, et al. An Experimental Characterization of Atmospheric Turbulence Effects on Millimeter Wave Propagation in a Controlled Environment. TechRxiv. September 11, 2025.
  2. O. Pradhan, A. Soliman, A. B. Tanner, A. Babenko, P. Kangaslahti and S. T. Brown, "A Tone-Based Flicker Noise Mitigation Technique for Broadband Digital Microwave Radiometers," in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 22, pp. 1-4, 2025.
  3. Fung, Andy, Pekka Kangaslahti, William Chun, Joelle Cooperrider, Javier Bosch-Lluis, Joan Munoz-Martin, Mary Soria et al. "A 424 and 448 GHz receiver for aircraft contrail observations." IEEE Journal of Microwaves (2024).
  4. Munoz-Martin, J.F.; Bosch-Lluis, X.; Pradhan, O.; Brown, S.T.; Kangaslahti, P.P.; Tanner, A.B.; Ogut, M.; Misra, S.; Lim, B.H. The Microwave Temperature and Humidity Profiler: Description and Preliminary Results. Sensors 2023
  5. O. Pradhan, L. J. Scally, A. J. Gasiewski, A. Gorashi, D. Pizio and D. Kraft, "Measurements From an Open-Path Terahertz Transmissometer Designed for Deterministic and Stochastic Propagation Studies," in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 71, no. 10, pp. 8184-8196, Oct. 2023
  6. Cooper, Ken B., Raquel Rodriguez Monje, Robert J. Dengler, Corey J. Cochrane, Maria Alonso Del Pino, Adrian Tang, Tristan Ossama El Bouayadi, and Omkar Pradhan. "A Compact, Low Power Consumption, and Highly Sensitive 95 GHz Doppler Radar." IEEE Sensors Journal 20, no. 11 (2020).
  7. O. Pradhan and A. J. Gasiewski, "Endfire Synthetic Aperture Radar for a Cryobot for Exploration of Icy Moons and Terrestrial Glaciers," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 60, pp. 1-14, 2022.
  8. O. Pradhan and A. J. Gasiewski, "Log periodic folded slot array antenna for an autonomous cryobot synthetic aperture radar for subsurface exploration of Europa," 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (APSURSI), Fajardo, 2016, pp. 2049-2050.