Airborne experiment results for spaceborne atmospheric synchronous correction system

Abstract

The image quality of optical remote sensing satellite is affected by the atmosphere, thus the image needs to be corrected. Due to the spatial and temporal variability of atmospheric conditions, correction by using synchronous atmospheric parameters can effectively improve the remote sensing image quality. For this reason, a small light spaceborne instrument, the atmospheric synchronous correction device (airborne prototype), is developed by AIOFM of CAS(Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of Chinese Academy of Sciences). With this instrument, of which the detection mode is timing synchronization and spatial coverage, the atmospheric parameters consistent with the images to be corrected in time and space can be obtained, and then the correction is achieved by radiative transfer model. To verify the technical process and treatment effect of spaceborne atmospheric correction system, the first airborne experiment is designed and completed. The experiment is implemented by the satellite-airborne-ground synchronous measuring method. A high resolution(0.4 m) camera and the atmospheric correction device are equipped on the aircraft, which photograph the ground with the satellite observation over the top simultaneously. And aerosol optical depth (AOD) and columnar water vapor (CWV) in the imagery area are also acquired, which are used for the atmospheric correction for satellite and aerial images. Experimental results show that using the AOD and CWV of imagery area retrieved by the data obtained by the device to correct aviation and satellite images, can improve image definition and contrast by more than 30%, and increase MTF by more than 1 time, which means atmospheric correction for satellite images by using the data of spaceborne atmospheric synchronous correction device is accurate and effective.