Abstract
Expectations of the Operational Land Imager (OLI) radiometric performance onboard Landsat-8 have been met or exceeded. The calibration activities that occurred prior to launch provided calibration parameters that enabled ground processing to produce imagery that met most requirements when data were transmitted to the ground. Since launch, calibration updates have improved the image quality even more, so that all requirements are met. These updates range from detector gain coefficients to reduce striping and banding to alignment parameters to improve the geometric accuracy. This paper concentrates on the on-orbit radiometric performance of the OLI, excepting the radiometric calibration performance. Topics discussed in this paper include: signal-to-noise ratios that are an order of magnitude higher than previous Landsat missions; radiometric uniformity that shows little residual banding and striping, and continues to improve; a dynamic range that limits saturation to extremely high radiance levels; extremely stable detectors; slight nonlinearity that is corrected in ground processing; detectors that are stable and 100% operable; and few image artifacts.
Highlights
The Landsat-8 spacecraft has been operating successfully on-orbit since it launched on 11 February2013
Whereas the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) defines the noise in the along track direction, the noise in the cross track direction is effectively defined by the uniformity
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) response should never drop low enough to saturate at the low end of the dynamic range because the bias level is over 1000 Digital Numbers (DN) for all detectors
Summary
The initial checkout of the Landsat-8 observatory proceeded as planned through the end of May with no significant issues. NASA transferred observatory operations to the USGS for normal operations on 1 June 2013 where it has been operating smoothly since. Landsat-8: the Operational Land Imager (OLI), which is the subject of this paper and the Thermal. Infrared Sensor (TIRS) which is covered elsewhere [1]. This paper documents the on-orbit radiometric performance of the OLI and provides insights into how its performance is different from the previous. Users should benefit from the information in terms of understanding the uncertainty in the data they obtain from the ground processing system
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