On-orbit relative radiometric calibration of optical video satellites without uniform calibration sites

Abstract

ABSTRACT The rapid development of optical video satellite constellations provides a new data model for resource and environmental monitoring, and for commercial applications of satellite remote sensing. High-frequency on-orbit relative radiometric calibration is an indispensable means of improving the quality of raw frames. However, the conventional on-orbit calibration method relies on a uniform field (e.g. desert, snow, clouds, etc.), which renders it unable to perform high-frequency radiometric calibration. Here, a method of on-orbit relative radiometric calibration without uniform calibration sites for optical video satellites is proposed taking into consideration the high frame-rate characteristics of video satellites. The method can be applied using any multi-frame data, it does not require a uniform field, it is not affected by the type of field, and it can achieve near-real-time, high-frequency calibration of video satellites. Moreover, this approach is expected to increase the frequency of on-orbit radiometric calibrations while reducing the associated costs. Our results suggest that the proposed method can effectively calibrate the non-uniformity of each sensor detector, and the compensation effect is equivalent to the on-orbit calibration method based on uniform sites.