• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.2_1
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• pp.167-178
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• 2020

KOMPSAT-3A images have been used in various kinds of applications, since its launch in 2015. However, there were limits to scientific analysis and application extensions of these data, such as vegetation index estimation, because no tool was developed to obtain the surface reflectance required for analysis of the actual land environment. The surface reflectance is a product of performing an absolute atmospheric correction or calibration. The objective of this study is to quantitatively verify the accuracy of top-of-atmosphere reflectance and surface reflectance of KOMPSAT-3A images produced from the OTB open-source extension program, performing the cross-validation with those provided by a site measurement data of RadCalNet, an international Calibration/Validation (Cal/Val) portal. Besides, surface reflectance was obtained from Landsat-8 OLI images in the same site and applied together to the cross-validation process. According to the experiment, it is proven that the top-of-atmosphere reflectance of KOMPSAT-3A images differs by up to ± 0.02 in the range of 0.00 to 1.00 compared to the mean value of the RadCalNet data corresponding to the same spectral band. Surface reflectance in KOMPSAT-3A images also showed a high degree of consistency with RadCalNet data representing the difference of 0.02 to 0.04. These results are expected to be applicable to generate the value-added products of KOMPSAT-3A images as analysisready data (ARD). The tools applied in thisstudy and the research scheme can be extended as the new implementation of each sensor model to new types of multispectral images of compact advanced satellites (CAS) for land, agriculture, and forestry and the verification method, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.21-32
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• 2022

The importance of the classical theme of how the Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and Top-of-Canopy (TOC) reflectance of high-resolution satellite images match the actual atmospheric reflectance and surface reflectance has been emphasized. Based on the Radiometric Calibration Network (RadCalNet) BTCN and BSCN data, this study compared the accuracy of TOA and TOC reflectance products of the currently available optical satellites, including KOMPSAT-3, WorldView-2, and Pléiades-1A image sets calculated using the absolute atmospheric correction function of the Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) tool. The comparison experiment used data in 2018 and 2019, and the Landsat-8 image sets from the same period were applied together. The experiment results showed that the product of TOA and TOC reflectance obtained from the three sets of images were highly consistent with RadCalNet data. It implies that any imagery may be applied when high-resolution reflectance products are required for a certain application. Meanwhile, the processed results of the OTB tool and those by the Apparent Reflection method of another tool for WorldView-2 images were nearly identical. However, in some cases, the reflectance products of Landsat-8 images provided by USGS sometimes showed relatively low consistency than those computed by the OTB tool, with the reference of RadCalNet BTCN and BSCN data. Continuous experiments on active vegetation areas in addition to the RadCalNet sites are necessary to obtain generalized results.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.6_2
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• pp.1509-1521
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• 2020

Experiments for validation of surface reflectance produced by Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT-3A) were conducted using Chinese Baotou (BTCN) data among four sites of the Radical Calibration Network (RadCalNet), a portal that provides spectrophotometric reflectance measurements. The atmosphere reflectance and surface reflectance products were generated using an extension program of an open-source Orfeo ToolBox (OTB), which was redesigned and implemented to extract those reflectance products in batches. Three image data sets of 2016, 2017, and 2018 were taken into account of the two sensor model variability, ver. 1.4 released in 2017 and ver. 1.5 in 2019, such as gain and offset applied to the absolute atmospheric correction. The results of applying these sensor model variables showed that the reflectance products by ver. 1.4 were relatively well-matched with RadCalNet BTCN data, compared to ones by ver. 1.5. On the other hand, the reflectance products obtained from the Landsat-8 by the USGS LaSRC algorithm and Sentinel-2B images using the SNAP Sen2Cor program were used to quantitatively verify the differences in those of KOMPSAT-3A. Based on the RadCalNet BTCN data, the differences between the surface reflectance of KOMPSAT-3A image were shown to be highly consistent with B band as -0.031 to 0.034, G band as -0.001 to 0.055, R band as -0.072 to 0.037, and NIR band as -0.060 to 0.022. The surface reflectance of KOMPSAT-3A also indicated the accuracy level for further applications, compared to those of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2B images. The results of this study are meaningful in confirming the applicability of Analysis Ready Data (ARD) to the surface reflectance on high-resolution satellites.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_1
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• pp.485-496
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• 2022

This study is for the software implementation to generate atmospheric and surface reflectance products from RapidEye satellite imagery. The software is an extension based on Orfeo Toolbox (OTB) and an open-source remote sensing software including calibration modules which use an absolute atmospheric correction algorithm. In order to verify the performance of the program, the accuracy of the product was validated by a test image on the Radiometric Calibration Network (RadCalNet) site. In addition, the accuracy of the surface reflectance product generated from the KOMPSAT-3A image, the surface reflectance of Landsat Analysis Ready Data (ARD) of the same site, and near acquisition date were compared with RapidEye-based one. At the same time, a comparative study was carried out with the processing results using QUick Atmospheric Correction (QUAC) and Fast Line-of-sight Atmospheric Analysis of Spectral Hypercubes (FLAASH) tool supported by a commercial tool for the same image. Similar to the KOMPSAT-3A-based surface reflectance product, the results obtained from RapidEye Extension showed accuracy of agreement level within 5%, compared with RadCalNet data. They also showed better accuracy in all band images than the results using QUAC or FLAASH tool. As the importance of the Red-Edge band in agriculture, forests, and the environment applications is being emphasized, it is expected that the utilization of the surface reflectance products of RapidEye images produced using this program will also increase.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.449-461
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• 2021

Analysis Ready Data (ARD) for optical satellite images represents a pre-processed product by applying spectral characteristics and viewing parameters for each sensor. The atmospheric correction is one of the fundamental and complicated topics, which helps to produce Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and Top-of-Canopy (TOC) reflectance from multi-spectral image sets. Most remote sensing software provides algorithms or processing schemes dedicated to those corrections of the Landsat-8 OLI sensors. Furthermore, Google Earth Engine (GEE), provides direct access to Landsat reflectance products, USGS-based ARD (USGS-ARD), on the cloud environment. We implemented the Orfeo ToolBox (OTB) atmospheric correction extension, an open-source remote sensing software for manipulating and analyzing high-resolution satellite images. This is the first tool because OTB has not provided calibration modules for any Landsat sensors. Using this extension software, we conducted the absolute atmospheric correction on the Landsat-8 OLI images of Railroad Valley, United States (RVUS) to validate their reflectance products using reflectance data sets of RVUS in the RadCalNet portal. The results showed that the reflectance products using the OTB extension for Landsat revealed a difference by less than 5% compared to RadCalNet RVUS data. In addition, we performed a comparative analysis with reflectance products obtained from other open-source tools such as a QGIS semi-automatic classification plugin and SAGA, besides USGS-ARD products. The reflectance products by the OTB extension showed a high consistency to those of USGS-ARD within the acceptable level in the measurement data range of the RadCalNet RVUS, compared to those of the other two open-source tools. In this study, the verification of the atmospheric calibration processor in OTB extension was carried out, and it proved the application possibility for other satellite sensors in the Compact Advanced Satellite (CAS)-500 or new optical satellites.