Exposure adjustment of satellite cameras

This paper gives a systematic exploration for exposure adjustment of satellite cameras. First, theories of satellite exposure adjustment are summarized and the affecting factors are discussed. Then, based on defects of current adjustment method adopted on Beijing-1 small satellite, an improved exposure adjustment method that combines sun elevation angle and type of imaged target is proposed, a lookup table that consists of the parameters for exposure setting of different land cover types is provided based on DN statistics and apparent radiance simulation, and the exposure adjustment strategy is also discussed. Serial experiments are conducted for testament of the proposed method, results show that the proposed strategy is applicable and can improve quality of the acquired images.