An end-to-end system in support of a broad scope of GOES-R sensor and data processing study

Abstract

The mission of NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite System (GOES) R series satellites, in the 2012 time frame, is to provide continuous, near real-time meteorological, oceanographic, solar, and space environment data that supports NOAA's strategic mission goals. It presents an exciting opportunity to explore new instruments, satellite designs, and system architectures utilizing new communication and instrument technologies in order to meet the ever-increasing demands made of Earth observation systems by national agencies and end users alike. The GOES-R sensor suite includes a 16 spectral band Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), an approximately 1500 high spectral resolution band Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES), plus other sensors designed to detect lightning and to explore the ocean, solar and space environment. The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) as part of the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the long time partner of NOAA, has developed the first operational end-to-end processing system for GOES. Based on this heritage, and with recent support from the NASA/NOAA Geosynchrous Imaging FTS (GIFTS) project, the Navy's Multiple University Research Initiative (MURI), and NOAA's GOES-R Risk Reduction program, SSEC has built a near-complete end-to-end system that is capable of simulating sensor measurements from top of atmosphere radiances, raw sensor data (level 0) through calibrated and navigated sensor physical measurements (level 1) to the processed products (level 2). In this paper, the SSEC Hyperspectral Imaging and Sounding Simulator and Processor (HISSP) will be presented in detail. HISSP is capable of demonstrating most of the processing functions such as data compression/decompression, sensor calibration, data processing, algorithm development, and product generation. In summary, HISSP is an end-to-end system designed to support both government and industry for the GOES-R system and their related broad scope of acquisition activities.