Design of an airborne Fourier transform visible hyperspectral imaging system for light aircraft environmental remote sensing

Abstract

Kestrel Corporation and the Florida Institute of Technology have designed, and are now manufacturing, a Fourier transform visible hyperspectral imager system for use in a single engine light aircraft. The system is composed of a Sagnac-based interferometer optical subsystem, a data management system, and an aircraft attitude and current position sybsystem. The system is designed to have better than 5 nm spectral resolution at 450 nm, operates over the 440 nm to 1150 nm spectral band and has a 2D spatial resolution of 0.8 mrad. An internal calibration source is recorded with every frame of data to retain radiometric accuracy. The entire system fits into a Cessna 206 and uses a conventional downward looking view port located in the baggage compartment. During operation, data are collected at a rate of 15 Mbytes per second and stored direct to a disk array. Data storage has been sized to accommodate 56 minutes of observations. Designed for environmental mapping, this Fourier transform imager has uses in emergency response and military operations.