High Accuracy Solar Diffuser BRDF Measurement for On-Board Calibration in the Solar Reflective Band

Abstract

In the solar reflective band, an on-board calibration method based on a solar diffuser (SD) can realize full aperture, full field of view, and end-to-end absolute radiometric calibration of optical remote sensors. The SD’s bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is a key parameter that affects the accuracy of the on-board calibration. High-accuracy measurement of the SD BRDF is required in the laboratory before launch. Due to the uncertainty of the goniometer system, polarization effects, and other factors, the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF at large incident angles is much higher than that at a 0° incident zenith angle and 45° reflection zenith angle. In this paper, an absolute BRDF measurement facility is reported. The goniometric system consists of a high-brightness integrating sphere as a radiation source, a six-axis robot arm, and a large rotation stage. The measurement wavelength range was from 350 nm to 2400 nm. An improved data processing method based on the reciprocity theorem was proposed to reduce the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF at large incident angles. At an incident zenith angle of 75°, the improved data processing method reduced the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF by 52% at 410 nm to 480 nm, by 70% at 480 nm to 1000 nm, and by 20% at other bands compared to the absolute measurement method. The influence of the radiation source, goniometer system, detection system, and other factors on the measurement uncertainty are analyzed in this paper. The results show that the measurement uncertainty (coverage factor k = 2) of the SD BRDF was better than 1.04% at 350 nm to 410 nm, 0.60% at 410 nm to 480 nm, 0.43% at 480 nm to 1000 nm, and 0.86% at 1000 nm to 2400 nm.