On-orbit radiometric calibration of the optical sensors on-board SuperView-1 satellite using three independent methods.

Abstract

On-orbit radiometric calibration of the optical sensors on-board SuperView-1 satellites is the foundation for further quantitative applications. A field calibration campaign was orchestrated to radiometrically calibrate the SuperView-1 optical sensors at the Baotou calibration site in China during September 2018. Based on the collected datasets, three independent methods (reflectance-based, radiance-based, and cross-calibration) were used to determine the radiometric calibration coefficients of the SuperView-1 optical sensors with multiple permanent artificial calibration targets. Comparisons of the desert top-of-atmosphere radiance calculated based on the coefficients determined with independent methods were analyzed. Comparison results show that the minimum and maximum relative differences of the radiometrically-calibrated desert TOA radiance between the reflectance-based and radiance-based methods are 1.26% and 4.23% for SV0102 and SV0104, respectively. While, the minimum and maximum relative differences of the radiometrically-calibrated desert TOA radiance between the reflectance-based and radiance-based methods are 0.82% and 6.83% for SV0101 and SV0103, respectively. The reasonably good agreement of the radiometrically calibrated coefficients of the SuperView-1 on-board sensors between these independent methods is encouraging. An uncertainty analysis was also discussed, and the results suggest that the overall uncertainties of the predicted TOA radiance are less than 4.5%, 4.0%, and 5.15% for the reflectance-based, radiance-based, and cross-calibration methods, respectively.