Radiometric sensitivity comparisons of multispectral imaging systems

Abstract

Multispectral imaging systems provide much of the basic data used by the land and ocean civilian remote sensing community. There are numerous multispectral imaging systems which have been and are being developed. A common way to compare the radiometric performance of these sensors is to examine their noise equivalent change in reflectance, NEDeltarho. The NEDeltarho of a sensor is the reflectance difference that is equal to the noise in the recorded signal. In order to directly compare the sensors, calculations of the parameter being compared need to have a common basis. This thesis compares the noise equivalent change in reflectance of seven different multispectral imaging systems (AVHRR, AVIRIS, ETM, HIRIS, MODIS-N, SPOT-1/HRV, and TM) for a set of three atmospheric conditions (continental aerosol with 23 km visibility, continental aerosol with 5 km visibility, and a Rayleigh atmosphere), five values of ground reflectance (0.01, 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, and 1.00), a nadir viewing angle, and a solar zenith angle of forty-five degrees.