Calibration of high resolution remote sensing instruments in the visible and near infrared

Measurements of the reflected solar radiation with high spectral resolution airborne instruments are usually used to develop new remote sensing techniques. The observed spectral features in the signals provide the possibility to define useful band settings for future satellite instruments. A precise wavelength and radiometric calibration is a prerequisite for such tasks. In this paper, a calibration procedure for the airborne spectrometer OVID is presented. The Optical Visible and near Infrared Detector consists of two similar detector systems, (600 - 1100 nm = VIS and 900 - 1700 nm =NIR). The spectral resolution is approximate to 1.7 nm for the VIS-system and approximate to 6 nm for the TR-system. This instrument is applied for the retrieval of water vapour content, aerosol and cloud properties. Besides the spectral and intensity calibration, also corrections for the dark current signals and for defective pixels have been performed. An indirect verification of the calibration procedure by the comparison of OVID measurements in cloudy and cloud free atmospheres with radiative transfer simulations is discussed in this paper. The used radiation transfer model MOMO is based on the matrix operator method. (C) 1997 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.