Characteristics of aerial targets under Earth-atmosphere environment in visible band based on MODIS data

Visible characteristics of a target have significant value for the development of weapon guidance, tracking, fuses, remote sensing and other military and civilian technology, this paper presents a computational method for calculating visible light scattering characteristics of aerial target in complex Earth-atmosphere environments. Taking into account the situation of non-Lambertian surface by using ground surface radiance and BRDF data obtained from Modis satellite data, the ground reflected radiance calculation method transforms the integration of reflected angles into the integration of surface area. With calculation of atmospheric scattering and direct sun with Modtran, plus ground surface reflected components, combined with the target surface material BRDF, target total scattering radiance is calculated within a narrow band of visible light. At last, the factors affecting the aerial target scattering radiance is analyzed.