The airborne Remote Sensing technical system
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
The complete constitution of the airborne remote sensing system established in the CAS is shown in Figure 1.
Fig 1. The block diagram of the Airborne Remote Sensing System of CAS
The important sub-systems
The construction of the airborne remote sensing system was conducted on the basis of technology of various institutes in the CAS. The most important subsystems are as follows:
- Platform Subsystem
Two Cessna Citation S/II aircrafts with good high, middle and low altitude flight performance were selected as the airborne platform ( Fig. 2. ) Special modification of aircrafts make them to suit the need of operation of various remote sensing apparatus such as optical camera, scanners, microwave radar and others. The high altitude and speed performance of such platform improves the efficiency of airborne remote sensing in varying degrees.
Fig 2. The View of Remote Sensing Aircraft of CAS
- The Sensors Sub-system
Most of the sensors used in this system are developed recently by a member of institutions of the Joint Center for Remote Sensing of CAS. The spectral range of the sensors system covers all electromagnetic wavelength (Fig. 3.) Among the various sensors the great significance has achieved by the inclusion of the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and the supper-multispectral Scanner or the Imaging Spectrometer system (SMS). The SAR system has the performance of varying the polarization, while the SMS has 71 spectral channels in the spectral range from 0.4.12.5um. The main parameters of the SMS system are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. The main technical parameters of SMS of CAS
| Spectral range (µm) |
Numbers of bands |
Spectral Resolution
(nm) |
Spectral Resolution
(mrad) |
| 0.4 ~1.1 |
32 |
20~25 |
3.0 ~1.5 |
| 1.4 ~2.5 |
32 |
20~25 |
3.0~1.5 |
| 8 ~12.5 |
7 |
400~800 |
3.0 |
