CAESAR, a CCD Airborne Experimental Scanner for Applications in Remote Sensing Radiometric and Geometric Calibration.

摘要

Within the framework of the National Remote Sensing Program, an airborne push-broom scanner was developed in The Netherlands by the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR and the Institute for Applied Physics TNO-TH (TPD). With the development of the scanner, named CAESAR, two objectives were fulfilled: technical knowledge about CCD detectors and practical experience with their application in remote sensing were gained and an important research tool was made available to remote sensing scientists. CAESAR was designed to make land and sea(water) observations in up to nine different wavelength bands. The application of CCD arrays in CAESAR required radiometric calibration of all individual CCD elements in order to meet the important user requirements on the minimum detectable ground reflectance variation. Since CAESAR is an airborne scanner, geometric corrections are required as well, to compensate for image distortions due to aircraft motions. Both radiometric and geometric corrections are applied during the preprocessing of the data. Results of performance tests show that the design goals were met and that The Netherlands can offer to the remote sensing community an advanced airborne scanner for land and marine applications.