The instrument design of lightweight and large field of view high‐resolution hyperspectral camera

Abstract

The design of compact hyperspectral cameras with high ground resolution and large field of view (FOV) is a challenging problem in the field of remote sensing. In this paper, the time‐delayed integration (TDI) of the digital domain is applied to solve the issue of insufficient light energy brought by high spatial resolution, and a hyperspectral camera with linear variable filters suitable for digital domain TDI technology is further designed. The camera has a wavelength range of 450– 950 nm, with an average spectral resolution of 10.2 nm. The paper also analyzed the effects of digital domain TDI on the signal–noise ratio (SNR) and the spectral resolution. During its working in orbits, we have obtained high‐SNR images with a swath width of 150 km, and a ground sample distance (GSD) of 10 m @ 500 km. The design of the hyperspectral camera has an improved spatial resolution while reducing the cost.