Image quality evaluation on Chinese first earth observation hyperspectral satellite

A Micro-satellite Constellation for Environment and Disaster Monitoring was successfully launched in China on September 6, 2008, which includes two small satellites, Satellite-A (HJ-1A) and Satellite-B (HJ-1B). The interferometric imaging spectrometer (IFIS) installed on HJ-1A is the first hyperspectral earth observation sensor in China. To assess the data quality of IFIS, a calibration experiment was carried out at the Dunhuang Calibration Site on October 20, 2008. With the simultaneous measurements acquired from the Dunhuang calibration field, the 6s radiative transfer code was used to retrieve the ground surface reflectance. By comparing the in-situ reflectance and 6S reflectance of the Dunhuang calibration target, the radiometric and spectral performance of the IFIS was evaluated. From the homogeneous image of the calibration target, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of IFIS data was estimated based on the high correlation between bands. This noise estimation results was used to estimate noise covariance matrix needed for hyperspectral data dimension reduction, such as Maximum Noise Fractions (MNF). The assessment results indicated that the IFIS has good performance and will be promising in the applications of environment and disaster monitoring.