A Sharable and Interoperable Meta-Model for Atmospheric Satellite Sensors and Observations

How the heterogeneous and distributed atmospheric satellite sensors can achieve precise discovery and collaborative observation is a big challenge. In this study, we propose an atmospheric satellite sensor observation system meta-model that reuses and extends the existing geospatial or sensor-related metadata standards to enable the sharing and interoperability of atmospheric satellite sensors. The Open Geospatial Consortium Sensor Model Language (SensorML) has a clear hierarchy in describing the metadata framework, and it is adopted as the carrier to formalize our proposed meta-model into the Atmospheric Satellite Sensor Observation Information Model (A-SSOIM). Three different types of atmospheric satellite sensors are used to test the versatility of the proposed meta-model and the applicability of this formal expression of A-SSOIM. Results show that the proposed meta-model can be reused in all kinds of atmospheric satellite sensors to enable the sharing of atmospheric satellite sensor information and potentially promoting the interoperability of these satellite sensors.