In the solar reflective band, an on-board calibration method based on a solar diffuser (SD) can realize full aperture, full field of view, and end-to-end absolute radiometric calibration of optical remote sensors. The SD’s bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is a key parameter that affects the accuracy of the on-board calibration. High-accuracy measurement of the SD BRDF is required in the laboratory before launch. Due to the uncertainty of the goniometer system, polarization effects, and other factors, the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF at large incident angles is much higher than that at a 0° incident zenith angle and 45° reflection zenith angle. In this paper, an absolute BRDF measurement facility is reported. The goniometric system consists of a high-brightness integrating sphere as a radiation source, a six-axis robot arm, and a large rotation stage. The measurement wavelength range was from 350 nm to 2400 nm. An improved data processing method based on the reciprocity theorem was proposed to reduce the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF at large incident angles. At an incident zenith angle of 75°, the improved data processing method reduced the measurement uncertainty of the SD BRDF by 52% at 410 nm to 480 nm, by 70% at 480 nm to 1000 nm, and by 20% at other bands compared to the absolute measurement method. The influence of the radiation source, goniometer system, detection system, and other factors on the measurement uncertainty are analyzed in this paper. The results show that the measurement uncertainty (coverage factor k = 2) of the SD BRDF was better than 1.04% at 350 nm to 410 nm, 0.60% at 410 nm to 480 nm, 0.43% at 480 nm to 1000 nm, and 0.86% at 1000 nm to 2400 nm.

Vicarious calibration is a well-developed method for electro-optical (EO) sensor calibration that has been used since the early 1980s. The radiometric calibration of reflectance solar band is mainly applied to reflection inversion. In this paper, a radiometric calibration-reflectance inversion (RCRII) model is proposed as an improved vicarious calibration method. Taking the reflectance of grayscale targets with constant spectrum, suitable uniformity, and near-Lambertian characteristics as the known information, the grayscale target calibration is realized, and the initial value of calibration coefficient and offset are calculated. Then, the adjacency effect is evaluated and corrected by reflectance inversion, and the results are fed back to the calibration process to realize the iterative process of calibration inversion rescaling. The results indicate that the absolute difference between the reflectance calculated with the RCRII model and measured reflectance is less than 0.01. By comparing with Sentinel-2A images, it is cross-verified that the difference of radiance between them is within 4%, and the absolute reflectance difference is less than 0.01, in the range of 0.1~0.3 reflectance.

In the solar reflective band, the on-board calibration method based on a solar diffuser (SD) is the mainstream calibration method. However, the calibration accuracy is limited by the measurement accuracy of the SD bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) in the laboratory. The limitations of the light sources and detectors hinder accurate BRDF measurements in the short-wave infrared band, particularly beyond 1700 nm. In this study, the angle integration-band crossing transfer (AIBCT) method is proposed for SD BRDF measurement to avoid the influence of the Fourier spectrometer's signal processing and detector nonlinearity in the absolute measurement. The method utilized the relationship between the BRDF and directional-hemispherical reflectance, and calculated the spectral distribution of the SD BRDF at the standard in-plane geometry with an 0° incidence zenith angle and a 45° reflection zenith angle (0:45) by integration. The absolute measurement result of the 0:45 SD BRDF at 1150 nm was used as the standard for transfer to the short-wave infrared band. The SD BRDF at 0:45 was generalized to other geometries through relative measurements based on the reciprocity theorem. The mean relative error of the results of the AIBCT and absolute measurement methods was less than 0.3 % in the range of 1100 nm to 1600 nm. Analysis of the results showed that the AIBCT method’s measurement uncertainty (coverage factor k = 2) of the 0:45 SD BRDF is better than 0.84 % at 1100 nm to 2300 nm and 1.05 % at 2300 nm to 2500 nm. Furthermore, the AIBCT method was found suitable for the ultraviolet band.

A partial aperture onboard calibration method can solve the onboard calibration problems of some large aperture remote sensors, which is of great significance for the development trend of increasingly large apertures in optical remote sensors. In this paper, the solar diffuser reflectance degradation monitor (SDRDM) in the onboard calibration assembly (CA) of the FengYun-4 (FY-4) advanced geostationary radiance imager (AGRI) was used as the reference radiometer. It was designed for measuring the partial aperture factor (PAF) for the AGRI onboard calibration. First, the linear response count variation relationship between the two was established under the same radiance source input. Then, according to the known bidirectional reflection distribution function (BRDF) of the solar diffuser (SD) in the CA, the relative reflectance ratio coefficient between the AGRI observation direction and the SDRDM observation direction was calculated. On this basis, the response count value of the AGRI and the SDRDM was used to realize the high-precision measurement of the PAF of the AGRI B1~B3 bands by simulating the AGRI onboard calibration measurement under the illumination of a solar simulator in the laboratory. According to the determination process of the relevant parameters of the PAF, the measurement uncertainty of the PAF was analyzed; this uncertainty was greater than 2.04% and provided an important reference for the evaluation of the onboard absolute radiometric calibration uncertainty after launch.

We developed a new source, having uniform spectral radiance, for a large-aperture UV integrating sphere with pressed polytetrafluoroethylene coating. Since lamp panel systems have high uncertainty due to a low signal-to-noise ratio at 250 nm, to transfer the spectral radiance scale from 250 nm to 350 nm to the source, we developed and calibrated a filter radiometer based on a solar blind phototube. The spectral radiance was obtained via a model of the source and a recursive estimation of the model parameters. A standard FEL lamp validated the usage of the filter radiometer. Finally, the filter radiometer to calibrate the new source. The results show that the radiance of the source at 250 nm is five times the top-of-the-atmosphere spectral irradiance, and the expanded uncertainty is 4.7%.