A General On-Orbit Absolute Radiometric Calibration Method Compatible with Multiple Imaging Conditions

Abstract

On-orbit absolute radiometric calibration is not only a prerequisite for the quantitative application of optical remote sensing satellite data but also a key step in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of satellite observation data. Due to the diversity of imaging conditions for optical remote sensing satellite sensors, on-orbit absolute radiometric calibration usually requires a large number of imaging tasks and manual labor to calibrate each imaging condition. This seriously limits the timeliness of on-orbit absolute radiometric calibration and is also an urgent problem to be solved in the context of the explosive growth of satellite numbers. Based on this, we propose a general on-orbit absolute radiometric calibration method compatible with multiple imaging conditions. Firstly, we use a large amount of laboratory radiometric calibration data to explore the mathematical relationship between imaging conditions (row transfer time, integration level and gain), radiance, and DN, and successfully build an imaging condition compatibility model. Secondly, we combine the imaging condition compatibility model with cross calibration to achieve a general on-orbit absolute radiometric calibration method. We use cross calibration to obtain the reference radiance and corresponding DN of the target satellites, which calculates the general coefficient by using row transfer time, integration level, and gain, and use the general coefficient to calibrate all imaging conditions. Finally, we use multiple imaging tasks of the JL1GF03D11 satellites to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experiments show that the average relative difference was reduced to 2.79% and the RMSE was reduced to 1.51, compared with the laboratory radiometric calibration method. In addition, we also verify the generality of the proposed method by using 10 satellites of the Jilin-1 GF03D series. The experiment shows that the goodness of fit of the general coefficient is all greater than 95%, and the average relative difference between the reference radiance and the calibrated radiance of the proposed method is 2.46%, with an RMSE of 1.67. To sum up, by using the proposed method, all imaging conditions of optical remote sensing satellite sensor can be calibrated in one imaging task, which greatly improves the timeliness and accuracy of on-orbit absolute radiometric calibration.