Abstract
On-orbit radiometric calibration of a space-borne sensor is of great importance for quantitative remote sensing applications. Cross-calibration is a common method with high calibration accuracy, and the core and emphasis of this method is to select the appropriate reference satellite sensor. As for the cross-calibration of high-spatial resolution and narrow-swath sensor, however, there are some scientific issues, such as large observation angles of reference image, and non-synchronization (or quasi-synchronization) between the imaging date of reference image and the date of sensor to be calibrated, which affects the accuracy of cross-calibration to a certain degree. Therefore, taking the GaoFen-1 (GF-1) Panchromatic and Multi-Spectral (PMS) sensor as an example in this research, an innovative radiometric cross-calibration method is proposed to overcome this bottleneck. Firstly, according a set of criteria, valid MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imagine Spectroradiometer) images of sunny day in one year over the Dunhuang radiometric calibration site in China are extracted, and a new and distinctive bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) model based on top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance and imaging angles of the sunny day MODIS images is constructed. Subsequently, the cross-calibration of PMS sensor at Dunhuang and Golmud radiation calibration test sites is carried out by using the method presented in this paper, taking the MODIS image with large solar and observation angles and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) with different dates from PMS as reference. The validation results of the calibration coefficients indicate that our proposed method can acquire high calibration accuracy, and the total calibration uncertainties of PMS using MODIS as reference sensor are less than 6%.
Highlights
Radiometric calibration is to convert the digital number (DN) value of a satellite sensor to a physical characterization, such as apparent radiance or apparent reflectance, in the visible and near-infrared sensors
High precision radiometric calibration plays an important role in the development of quantitative remote sensing
The calibration techniques can be divided into prelaunch calibration and on-orbit calibration
Summary
Radiometric calibration is to convert the digital number (DN) value of a satellite sensor to a physical characterization, such as apparent radiance or apparent reflectance, in the visible and near-infrared sensors. Radiometric calibration is a critical step and the basis of the quantification of remote sensing application. The radiometric calibration characterizes the status and degradation with the time of the satellite sensors after launch, and establishes the physical relationship between multi-source remote sensing data and expands the data source of quantitative remote sensing. High precision radiometric calibration plays an important role in the development of quantitative remote sensing. The calibration techniques can be divided into prelaunch calibration and on-orbit (post-launch) calibration. There are five types of on-orbit calibration methods—inter-calibration [1,2], solar/lunar calibration [3,4], vicarious calibration [5,6], scene calibration [7,8,9], and cross-calibration [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]
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