scholarly journals A new method for the absolute radiance calibration for UV–vis measurements of scattered sunlight

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 4265-4280 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Wagner ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
S. Dörner ◽  
M. Penning de Vries ◽  
J. Remmers ◽  
...  

Abstract. Absolute radiometric calibrations are important for measurements of the atmospheric spectral radiance. Such measurements can be used to determine actinic fluxes, the properties of aerosols and clouds, and the shortwave energy budget. Conventional calibration methods in the laboratory are based on calibrated light sources and reflectors and are expensive, time consuming and subject to relatively large uncertainties. Also, the calibrated instruments might change during transport from the laboratory to the measurement sites. Here we present a new calibration method for UV–vis instruments that measure the spectrally resolved sky radiance, for example zenith sky differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) instruments or multi-axis (MAX)-DOAS instruments. Our method is based on the comparison of the solar zenith angle dependence of the measured zenith sky radiance with radiative transfer simulations. For the application of our method, clear-sky measurements during periods with almost constant aerosol optical depth are needed. The radiative transfer simulations have to take polarisation into account. We show that the calibration results are almost independent from the knowledge of the aerosol optical properties and surface albedo, which causes a rather small uncertainty of about < 7 %. For wavelengths below about 330 nm it is essential that the ozone column density during the measurements be constant and known.

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 5329-5362
Author(s):  
T. Wagner ◽  
S. Beirle ◽  
S. Dörner ◽  
M. Penning de Vries ◽  
J. Remmers ◽  
...  

Abstract. Absolute radiometric calibrations are important for measurements of the atmospheric spectral radiance. Such measurements can be used to determine actinic fluxes, the properties of aerosols and clouds and the short wave energy budget. Conventional calibration methods in the laboratory are based on calibrated light sources and reflectors and are expensive, time consuming and subject to relatively large uncertainties. Also, the calibrated instruments might change during transport from the laboratory to the measurement sites. Here we present a new calibration method for UV/vis instruments that measure the spectrally resolved sky radiance, like for example zenith sky Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS-) instruments or Multi-AXis (MAX-) DOAS instruments. Our method is based on the comparison of the solar zenith angle dependence of the measured zenith sky radiance with radiative transfer simulations. For the application of our method clear sky measurements during periods with almost constant aerosol optical depth are needed. The radiative transfer simulations have to take polarisation into account. We show that the calibration results are almost independent from the knowledge of the aerosol optical properties and surface albedo, which causes a rather small uncertainty of about <7%. For wavelengths below about 330 nm it is essential that the ozone column density during the measurements is constant and known.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (12) ◽  
pp. 4403-4420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seiji Kato ◽  
Fred G. Rose ◽  
Xu Liu ◽  
Bruce A. Wielicki ◽  
Martin G. Mlynczak

Abstract A surface, atmospheric, and cloud (fraction, height, optical thickness, and particle size) property anomaly retrieval from highly averaged longwave spectral radiances is simulated using 28 years of reanalysis. Instantaneous nadir-view spectral radiances observed from an instrument on a 90° inclination polar orbit are computed. Spectral radiance changes caused by surface, atmospheric, and cloud property perturbations are also computed and used for the retrieval. This study’s objectives are 1) to investigate whether or not separating clear sky from cloudy sky reduces the retrieval error and 2) to estimate the error in a trend of retrieved properties. This simulation differs from earlier studies in that annual 10° latitude zonal cloud and atmospheric property anomalies defined as the deviation from 28-yr climatological means are retrieved instead of the difference of these properties from two time periods. The root-mean-square (RMS) difference of temperature and humidity anomalies retrieved from all-sky radiance anomalies is similar to the RMS difference derived from clear-sky radiance anomalies computed by removing clouds. This indicates that the cloud property anomaly retrieval error does not affect the retrieved temperature and humidity anomalies. When retrieval errors are nearly random, the error in the trend of retrieved properties is small. Approximately 30% of 10° latitude zones meet conditions that the true temperature and water vapor amount trends are within a 95% confidence interval of retrieved trends, and that the standard deviation of retrieved anomalies σret is within 20% of the standard deviation of true anomalies σn. If σret/σn − 1 is within ±0.2, 91% of the true trends fall within the 95% confidence interval of the corresponding retrieved trend.


2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 955-966 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Wittrock ◽  
H. Oetjen ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
S. Fietkau ◽  
T. Medeke ◽  
...  

Abstract. A new approach to derive tropospheric concentrations of some atmospheric trace gases from ground-based UV/vis measurements is described. The instrument, referred to as the MAX-DOAS, is based on the well-known UV/vis instruments, which use the sunlight scattered in the zenith sky as the light source and the method of Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (DOAS) to derive column amounts of absorbers like ozone and nitrogen dioxide. Substantial enhancements have been applied to this standard setup to use different lines of sight near to the horizon as additional light sources (MAX - multi axis). Results from measurements at Ny-Ålesund (79° N, 12° E) are presented and interpreted with the full-spherical radiative transfer model SCIATRAN. In particular, measurements of the oxygen dimer O4 which has a known column and vertical distribution in the atmosphere are used to evaluate the sensitivity of the retrieval to parameters such as multiple scattering, solar azimuth, surface albedo and refraction in the atmosphere and also to validate the radiative transfer model. As a first application, measurements of NO2 emissions from a ship lying in Ny-Ålesund harbour are presented. The results of this study demonstrate the feasibility of long term UV/vis multi axis measurement that can be used to derive not only column amounts of different trace gases but also some information on the vertical location of these absorbers.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 6183-6240 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Lübcke ◽  
N. Bobrowski ◽  
S. Illing ◽  
C. Kern ◽  
J. M. Alvarez Nieves ◽  
...  

Abstract. Sulphur dioxide emission flux measurements are an important tool for volcanic monitoring and eruption risk assessment. The SO2 camera technique remotely measures volcanic emissions by analysing the ultraviolet absorption of SO2 in a narrow spectral window between 305 nm and 320 nm using solar radiation scattered in the atmosphere. The SO2 absorption is selectively detected by mounting band-pass interference filters in front of a two-dimensional, UV-sensitive CCD detector. While this approach is simple and delivers valuable insights into the two-dimensional SO2 distribution, absolute calibration has proven to be difficult. An accurate calibration of the SO2 camera (i.e., conversion from optical density to SO2 column density, CD) is crucial to obtain correct SO2 CDs and flux measurements that are comparable to other measurement techniques and can be used for volcanological applications. The most common approach for calibrating SO2 camera measurements is based on inserting quartz cells (cuvettes) containing known amounts of SO2 into the light path. It has been found, however, that reflections from the windows of the calibration cell can considerably affect the signal measured by the camera. Another possibility for calibration relies on performing simultaneous measurements in a small area of the camera's field-of-view (FOV) by a narrow-field-of-view Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (NFOV-DOAS) system. This procedure combines the very good spatial and temporal resolution of the SO2 camera technique with the more accurate column densities obtainable from DOAS measurements. This work investigates the uncertainty of results gained through the two commonly used, but quite different calibration methods (DOAS and calibration cells). Measurements with three different instruments, an SO2 camera, a NFOV-DOAS system and an Imaging DOAS (IDOAS), are presented. We compare the calibration-cell approach with the calibration from the NFOV-DOAS system. The respective results are compared with measurements from an IDOAS to verify the calibration curve over the spatial extend of the image. Our results show that calibration cells can lead to an overestimation of the SO2 CD by up to 60% compared with CDs from the DOAS measurements. Besides these errors of calibration, radiative transfer effects (e.g. light dilution, multiple scattering) can significantly influence the results of both instrument types. These effects can lead to an even more significant overestimation or, depending on the measurement conditions, an underestimation of the true CD. Previous investigations found that possible errors can be more than an order of magnitude. However, the spectral information from the DOAS measurements allows to correct for these radiative transfer effects. The measurement presented in this work were taken at Popocatépetl, Mexico, between 1 March 2011 and 4 March 2011. Average SO2 emission rates between 4.00 kg s−1 and 14.34 kg s−1 were observed.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 765
Author(s):  
Hugo Álvarez ◽  
Marcos Alonso ◽  
Jairo R. Sánchez ◽  
Alberto Izaguirre

This paper describes a method for calibrating multi camera and multi laser 3D triangulation systems, particularly for those using Scheimpflug adapters. Under this configuration, the focus plane of the camera is located at the laser plane, making it difficult to use traditional calibration methods, such as chessboard pattern-based strategies. Our method uses a conical calibration object whose intersections with the laser planes generate stepped line patterns that can be used to calculate the camera-laser homographies. The calibration object has been designed to calibrate scanners for revolving surfaces, but it can be easily extended to linear setups. The experiments carried out show that the proposed system has a precision of 0.1 mm.


Robotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Zhouxiang Jiang ◽  
Min Huang

SUMMARY In typical calibration methods (kinematic or non-kinematic) for serial industrial robot, though measurement instruments with high resolutions are adopted, measurement configurations are optimized, and redundant parameters are eliminated from identification model, calibration accuracy is still limited under measurement noise. This might be because huge gaps still exist among the singular values of typical identification Jacobians, thereby causing the identification models ill conditioned. This paper addresses such problem by using new identification models established in two steps. First, the typical models are divided into the submodels with truncated singular values. In this way, the unknown parameters corresponding to the abnormal singular values are removed, thereby reducing the condition numbers of the new submodels. However, these models might still be ill conditioned. Therefore, the second step is to further centralize the singular values of each submodel by using a matrix balance method. Afterward, all submodels are well conditioned and obtain much higher observability indices compared with those of typical models. Simulation results indicate that significant improvements in the stability of identification results and the identifiability of unknown parameters are acquired by using the new identification submodels. Experimental results indicate that the proposed calibration method increases the identification accuracy without incurring additional hardware setup costs to the typical calibration method.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Shengli Chen ◽  
Xiaobing Zheng ◽  
Xin Li ◽  
Wei Wei ◽  
Shenda Du ◽  
...  

To calibrate the low signal response of the ocean color (OC) bands and test the stability of the Fengyun-3D (FY-3D)/Medium Resolution Spectral Imager II (MERSI-II), an absolute radiometric calibration field test of FY-3D/MERSI-II at the Lake Qinghai Radiometric Calibration Site (RCS) was carried out in August 2018. The lake surface and atmospheric parameters were mainly measured by advanced observation instruments, and the MODerate spectral resolution atmospheric TRANsmittance algorithm and computer model (MODTRAN4.0) was used to simulate the multiple scattering radiance value at the altitude of the sensor. The results showed that the relative deviations between bands 9 and 12 are within 5.0%, while the relative deviations of bands 8, and 13 are 17.1%, and 12.0%, respectively. The precision of the calibration method was verified by calibrating the Aqua/Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP)/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer (VIIRS), and the deviation of the calibration results was evaluated with the results of the Dunhuang RCS calibration and lunar calibration. The results showed that the relative deviations of NPP/VIIRS were within 7.0%, and the relative deviations of Aqua/MODIS were within 4.1% from 400 nm to 600 nm. The comparisons of three on-orbit calibration methods indicated that band 8 exhibited a large attenuation after launch and the calibration results had good consistency at the other bands except for band 13. The uncertainty value of the whole calibration system was approximately 6.3%, and the uncertainty brought by the field surface measurement reached 5.4%, which might be the main reason for the relatively large deviation of band 13. This study verifies the feasibility of the vicarious calibration method at the Lake Qinghai RCS and provides the basis and reference for the subsequent on-orbit calibration of FY-3D/MERSI-II.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Roberto Pagani ◽  
Cristina Nuzzi ◽  
Marco Ghidelli ◽  
Alberto Borboni ◽  
Matteo Lancini ◽  
...  

Since cobots are designed to be flexible, they are frequently repositioned to change the production line according to the needs; hence, their working area (user frame) needs to be often calibrated. Therefore, it is important to adopt a fast and intuitive user frame calibration method that allows even non-expert users to perform the procedure effectively, reducing the possible mistakes that may arise in such contexts. The aim of this work was to quantitatively assess the performance of different user frame calibration procedures in terms of accuracy, complexity, and calibration time, to allow a reliable choice of which calibration method to adopt and the number of calibration points to use, given the requirements of the specific application. This has been done by first analyzing the performances of a Rethink Robotics Sawyer robot built-in user frame calibration method (Robot Positioning System, RPS) based on the analysis of a fiducial marker distortion obtained from the image acquired by the wrist camera. This resulted in a quantitative analysis of the limitations of this approach that only computes local calibration planes, highlighting the reduction of performances observed. Hence, the analysis focused on the comparison between two traditional calibration methods involving rigid markers to determine the best number of calibration points to adopt to achieve good repeatability performances. The analysis shows that, among the three methods, the RPS one resulted in very poor repeatability performances (1.42 mm), while the three and five points calibration methods achieve lower values (0.33 mm and 0.12 mm, respectively) which are closer to the reference repeatability (0.08 mm). Moreover, comparing the overall calibration times achieved by the three methods, it is shown that, incrementing the number of calibration points to more than five, it is not suggested since it could lead to a plateau in the performances, while increasing the overall calibration time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Yin ◽  
Xiangjun Wang ◽  
Yubo Ni ◽  
Kai Zhou ◽  
Jilong Zhang

Multi-camera systems are widely used in the fields of airborne remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicle imaging. The measurement precision of these systems depends on the accuracy of the extrinsic parameters. Therefore, it is important to accurately calibrate the extrinsic parameters between the onboard cameras. Unlike conventional multi-camera calibration methods with a common field of view (FOV), multi-camera calibration without overlapping FOVs has certain difficulties. In this paper, we propose a calibration method for a multi-camera system without common FOVs, which is used on aero photogrammetry. First, the extrinsic parameters of any two cameras in a multi-camera system is calibrated, and the extrinsic matrix is optimized by the re-projection error. Then, the extrinsic parameters of each camera are unified to the system reference coordinate system by using the global optimization method. A simulation experiment and a physical verification experiment are designed for the theoretical arithmetic. The experimental results show that this method is operable. The rotation error angle of the camera’s extrinsic parameters is less than 0.001rad and the translation error is less than 0.08 mm.


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