be derived from the data captured with four CCD 
sensors equipped with appropriate filters in the RGB 
and NIR bands. These data will be used to produce 
true-colour and false-colour composites based on the 
orthophotos derived from the panchromatic three- 
line CCD sensors. 
Characteristic 
Aerial film 
camera 
Airborne digital 
sensor 
Flying time 
80% 
100% 
Photo lab 
Yes 
Unnecessary 
12-bit in-flight 
sensing 
No 
Yes 
8/10-bit 
scanning 
Yes 
Unnecessary 
Data volume 
80-50% 
100% 
Pre-processing 
No 
Yes 
GPS 
Yes (optional) 
Very useful 
INS 
Unusual 
Very useful 
Projection 
Interpolated 
Interpolated 
centres 
(few) 
(many) 
Ground control 
Yes, but few 
Yes, but fewer 
points 
when using GPS 
with INS/ GPS 
Tie point 
matching 
Few - between 
images 
Many 
Table 1. Features of aerial film camera and 
airborne digital sensor 
Fig. 15. The engineering model of LH Systems' 
airborne digital sensor, which was successfully flown 
in late 1998. 
It is LH Systems’ intention to make the image data 
format accessible to all third party remote sensing 
software packages used for image enhancement and 
image analysis. SOCET Set software will provide 
basic image enhancement functions. 
General 
Principle 
three-line CCD stereo sensor 
Pixels per CCD Line 
12,000 
Pixel size 
6.5 pm 
Dynamic range 
12 bit (raw data mode) 
Radiometric resolution 
8 bit 
Normalisation mode 
8 bit linear or non-linear 
FOV (across track) 
52° 
Focal length 
80 mm 
Swath at 10,000’ flying 
3,000m (1.9 miles) and 25 
height (3,100 m) 
cm ground pixel size 
Stereo angles 
17°, 25°, 42° 
Recording interval per 
line 
1.2 ms 
Filter range (at L50) 
Panchromatic, 465nm - 
680nm 
Power 
Input voltage 
28 VDC or 220 VAC/50 Hz 
Power consumption: 
average /(peak) 
Engineering model: 
600 W/(1000 W) 
Mass memory: 
600 W /(600 W) 
ASCOT: 80 W/(180 W) 
Table 2. Specifications of the engineering model. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The authors thank DLR for its contributions to the 
development of the engineering model and the test 
flights. We owe special thanks to Dr. Reinhard 
Schuster who provided the engineering model 
calibration results used in this paper. 
REFERENCES 
Albertz, J., Ebner, H. & Neukum, G., 1996. The 
HRSC/WAOSS camera experiment on the MARS96 
mission - A photogrammetric and cartographic view 
of the project. ISPRS Congress, Vienna, July 9-14. 
Sandau, R. and Barwald, W., 1994. A three-line 
wide-angle CCD stereo camera for Mars-94 mission. 
In: International Archives of Photogrammetry and 
Remote Sensing, Vol. 30, Part B 1, pp. 82-86. 
Sandau, R. and Eckardt, A., 1996. The stereo camera 
family WAOSS/WAAC for spaceborne/airborne 
applications. In: International Archives of 
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Vol. 31, Part 
B1, pp. 170-175.