AIRBORNE MULTIDIMENSIONAL INTEGRATED REMOTE SENSING SYSTEM 
Weiming Xu*, Jianyu Wang, Rong Shu, Zhiping He, Yanhua Ma 
Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, CAS, 500 Yutian Road, Shanghai 200083, P. R. of China - 
xuwm@mail.sitp.ac.cn 
Commission VI, ICWG V/I 
KEY WORDS: Imaging spectrometer, Three-line scanner, Laser ranger, Position & orientation subsystem 
ABSTRACT: 
In this paper, we present a kind of airborne multidimensional integrated remote sensing system that consists of an imaging 
spectrometer, a three-line scanner, a laser ranger, a position & orientation subsystem and a stabilizer PAV30. The imaging 
spectrometer is composed of two sets of identical push-broom high spectral imager with a field of view of 22°, which provides a field 
of view of 42°. The spectral range of the imaging spectrometer is from 450nm to 900nm, and its spectral resolution is 5nm. The 
three-line scanner is composed of two pieces of panchromatic CCD and a RGB CCD with 20° stereo angle and 10cm GSD(Ground 
Sample Distance) at 1000m flying height. The laser ranger can provide height data of three points every other four scanning lines of 
spectral imagers and those three points are calibrated to match the corresponding pixels of the spectral imagers. The post-processing 
attitude accuracy of POS/AV 510 used as the position & orientation subsystem, which is the aerial special exterior parameters 
measuring product of Canadian Applanix Corporation, is 0.005° combined with base station GPS data. The airborne 
multidimensional integrated remote sensing system was implemented successfully, performed the first flying experiment on April, 
2005, and obtained satisfying data. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Both the spatial and spectral resolutions are very important 
specifications for remote sensing systems. The former 
determines geometrical resolution power of systems; the latter 
determines the power of target recognizing. In the past few 
decades, the spatial and spectral resolutions of airborne remote 
sensing systems have been improved greatly. The spatial 
resolution reached 0.1m at 1000m flying height, and the spectral 
resolution up to lnm. However, it is still very difficult to obtain 
good images with both high spatial and spectral resolution 
simultaneously, which can be registered easily, because of 
relative restriction of these two specifications. To fulfill the 
requirements, we designed this multidimensional integrated 
remote sensing system that can provide high spatial and spectral 
data synchronously. This system was supported by high-tech 
research and development program of China, which can survey 
and produce 1:2000 to 1:5000 thematic map and suitable for the 
regions of city layout, resource investigation, environment 
inspection, similar applications and so on. 
2. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION 
2.1 System configuration 
The system consisted of multidimensional information 
acquisition subsystem, multidimensional information processing 
subsystem, performance measurements and systematic 
calibration subsystem. The information acquisition subsystem 
includes: a three-line scanner with high spatial resolution power, 
an imaging spectrometer with high spectral resolution power, a 
laser ranger, a stabilized platform and a set of attitude & 
position measuring device. The multidimensional information 
processing subsystem includes: data preprocessing module, high 
spatial data processing module, high spectral data processing 
module, and data merge processing module. The performance 
measurements and systematic calibration subsystem includes: 
comprehensive performance measurement module in the lab, 
spectral and radiometric calibration in the lab and field. All the 
above are shown in figure 1 and 2. 
As shown in figure 2, the system can be used as one set of 
device, also can be divided into two parts: high spatial part and 
high spectral part, which is flexible for different applications. 
When used as a whole, the system can be controlled by a 
computer; consequently it needs only one person to operate this 
instrument. And a basic external clock was divided into 
different frequencies to synchronize all sensors: 600Hz for 
three-line scanner, 50Hz for imaging spectrometer, 10Hz for 
laser ranger, at the same time all the working frequencies were 
copied to POS/AV 510, which could record attitude and position 
information at the rising or falling edge of the ingoing pulse 
according to the customized settings. 
Figure 1. Functional diagram of system 
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