The development of a hyperspectral sensor: a data processing viewpoint

A large number of pushbroom imaging spectrometers have been developed over the past several years. Many of these sensors use a two-dimensional detector array to simultaneously record the spectra for a line of points on the ground. The second spatial dimension is built up over time by motion of the sensor. Since a large number of spectra are obtained simultaneously, the instantaneous data rate can be much higher than that achieved with a flying spot scanner (often called whiskbroom). The result can be both greater angular coverage and higher spatial resolution. There are many consequences of using this type of sensor. The two dimensional design of the optical system and its effect on the data must be considered. In addition, since the same detector is not used to build up the image in each spectral band, there are new sources of pattern noise in the data that are not normally seen in data from a flying spot sensor. In this paper, the effect of some of these design considerations are discussed from the point of view of their impact on classification and anomaly detection