Cross-Calibration of the HSI Sensor Reflective Solar Bands Using Hyperion Data

This paper describes a methodology that uses Hyperion imagery as reference data to calibrate the Chinese Hyperspectral Imager (HSI) onboard the HJ-1A satellite. Two test sites near Dunhuang in Gansu and in Inner Mongolia were used for the cross-calibration. To account for the uncertainties in the top of atmosphere (TOA) reflectance due to the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) and relative spectral response (RSR) differences between the two sensors, a model is adopted to transfer the Hyperion TOA reflectance to the effective HSI TOA reflectance. The influence of BRDF is analyzed, and two BRDF correction approaches are applied to the two test sites, respectively. For the Dunhuang test site, the ground synchronously measured reflectance in different solar zenith angles is used for BRDF correction. For the Inner Mongolia test site, a kernel-driven model is applied. The influence of RSR mismatch is computed using a spectral profile adjustment factor (SPAF), which takes into account the spectral profile of the target and the RSR of each sensor. The SPAF is calculated according to the TOA reflectance simulated using moderate resolution atmospheric transmission. One-point calibration and multipoint calibration coefficients are computed, respectively. Ground reflectance data measured in June 2010 at the Inner Mongolia test site were used to validate the cross-calibration coefficients based on the Hyperion image. The results support the proposal that the cross-calibration method between two hyperspectral sensors is effective, and the use of multipoint calibration coefficient with nonzero offset has great potential for hyperspectral sensor calibration.