Design trade-offs for METimage spaceborne imaging radiometer

摘要

This paper presents an analysis of the requirements for instruments for meteorological applications, presents different implementation options with their prime benefits and drawbacks and discusses the optimization space. The different scanner options with their influence on the architecture of the optical system and the focal plane assembly are addressed. This leads to different candidate implementations. For those the optimization space is described leading to a preferred solution in form of a rotating reflective optics, an in-field spectral separation and a matrix based focal plane assembly. The main advantages of such a system are its flexibility with respect to the possible number of spectral channels, the possible radiometric resolution, and the variability of the geometrical resolution. It is shown that results of a first design iteration demonstrate the feasibility of the chosen approach.