POST-LAUNCH RADIOMETRIC CALIBRATION OF KOMPSAT2 HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE

Radiometric calibration of optical image data is necessary to convert raw digital number (DN) value of each pixel into a physically meaningful measurement (radiance). To extract rather quantitative information regarding biophysical characteristics of the earth surface materials, radiometric calibration is often essential procedure. A sensor detects the radiation of sunlight interacted atmospheric constituents. Therefore, the amount of the energy reaching at the sensor is quite different from the initial amount reflected from the surface. To achieve the target reflectance after atmospheric correct, an initial step is to convert DN value to at-sensor radiance. A linear model, the simplest radiometric model, is applied to averaged spectral radiance for this conversion. This study purposes to analyze the sensitivity of several factors affecting on radiance for carrying out absolute radiometric calibration of panchromatic images from KOMPSAT2 launched at July, 2006. MODTRAN is used to calculate radiance at sensor and reflectance of target is measured by a portable spectro-radiometer at the same time the satellite is passing the target for the radiometric calibration. As using different contents of materials composing of atmosphere, the differences of radiance are investigated. Because the spectral sensitivity of panchromatic images of KOMPSAT2 ranges from 500 to 900 nm, the materials causing scattering in visible range are mainly considered to analyze the sensitivity. According to the verified sensitivity, direct measurement can be recommenced for absolute radiometric calibration.