Absolute radiometric calibration of CBERS-02 IRMSS thermal band

Abstract

Based on the laboratory calibration before launch of CBERS-02 IRMSS thermal infrared channel, the onboard blackbody calibration, the radiometric crosscalibration against TERRA MODIS corresponding channel and the in-flight field calibration at Lake Qinghai: water surface radiometric calibration test site of China on Aug. 17, 2004 are carried out in this research. When making onboard blackbody calibration of CBERS-02 IRMSS, it is necessary to understand inside structures and light path in IRMSS camera and receive and process calibration blackbody signals at normal and high temperatures. Onboard blackbody calibration results of each detector are very important to relative radiometric calibration of images processing and absolute radiometric calibration of each detector. In-flight field calibration mainly contains field experiments, obtaining synchronous images, spectrum marching and MODTRAN radiative transmission computation. Radiometric cross-calibration of CBERS-02 IRMSS thermal band against TERRA MODIS selected 6 times synchronous images of two sensors passing through Lake Qinghai and Lake Taihu from August to December, 2004 to compute the cross calibration data. Combining the in-flight field calibration and radiometric cross calibration data, the absolute radiometric calibration coefficients are calculated by the linear regression method. This new calibration model can obviously control the radiometric calibration uncertainties aroused by the single point method used in the in-flight calibration of CBERS-02 IRMSS, this kind of sensors cannot receive the cosmic background radiation. In this research, the radiometric calibration coefficients obtained through the linear regression model are 8.53 (gain, unit: DN/W m−2sr−1μm−1) and 44.92 (offset, unit: DN).