Enhancing SDGSAT-1 night light images using a panchromatic guidance denoising algorithm

Abstract

The Glimmer Imager on board the Sustainable Development Science Satellite 1 (SDGSAT-1) is capable of providing high-resolution nighttime light images. However, the presence of stripe noise and dark current noise in L4A images affects the authenticity of image information, thus limiting its scientific applications. This study proposes a panchromatic guidance denoising algorithm to enhance the quality of nighttime light images based on the spectral consistency properties between the panchromatic and RGB channels. This algorithm utilizes two low-noise panchromatic bands to obtain a denoised light area and subsequently removes a significant amount of noise from non-light areas in the RGB bands based on this light area. Our results indicate that this algorithm can effectively remove noise from SDGSAT-1 nighttime light images, achieving a noise removal rate greater than 99.8% in the selected dark ocean area. It also preserves more reasonable radiometric characteristics and spatial details of high-spatial resolution nighttime light images when compared to other popular denoising algorithms. The perturbation caused by moonlight can be effectively eliminated using this algorithm, which further improves the comparability and application of SDGSAT-1 nighttime light images under different lunar phases.