Platforms
Unit I
Platforms
• Vehicle or carrier for remote sensors.
• Typical platforms are satellites and aircraft.
• Platforms are broadly classified into three classes
– Ground-based platforms
• Remote sensing platforms that position the sensor at the earth’s
surface.
• Are systems fixed to the earth.
• Sensors used are mostly to measure environmental conditions such
as air-temperature, wind characteristics, earthquake intensity.
• Are placed on tall structures such as towers, buildings.
• Less expensive to operate and maintain but cannot be used for
large scale studies.
• Are mainly used for collecting the ground truth or for laboratory
simulation studies.
– Aerial Platforms/Air-borne platforms
• Classified into balloon-borne and aircraft based platforms.
• Balloons going upto 49 km altitude was used in the 1970s.
• Now-a-days, mostly sensors mounted on aircraft used.
• Aircrafts used in Remote sensing were used for obtaining photographs.
• Other airborne platforms like rockets and helicopters can also be used.
• Allow researchers to monitor very large areas of the surface, which would be
impractical with ground-based sensors, or impossible or dangerous to visit.
– Satellite Platforms
• Remote sensing from space is possible using satellites.
• These platforms are less affected by atmosphere, their orbits are well defined.
• Entire earth or any designated portion can be covered at specific intervals.
• Most commonly used in Remote sensing application.
• Currently being used to assist in scientific and socioeconomic activities like
weather prediction, crop monitoring, mineral exploration, waste land mapping,
cyclone warning, water resources management and pollution detection.
• These missions are of much greater duration than airborne and the continuity
of data provided is one great advantage.
• Disadvantage: Robustness of equipment carried by satellite and decay of orbit
through atmospheric friction.
Satellite System Parameters
• System parameters are of two types
– Instrumental Parameters
– Viewing Parameters
Instrumental Parameters
– Include parameters namely wavelength or frequency (most important),
polarisation and sensitivity or radiometric resolution.
– These are determined by the design of the transmitter, receiver,
antenna, detectors and data handling systems.
Viewing Parameters
– Include revisit interval, swath width, illumination and observation angle,
mission life time, altitude and resolution of remote sensing system.
– This is also termed as orbital characteristics of satellites.
Orbital Characteristics of Satellites
• The path followed by a satellite is its orbit.
• Satellite orbits are matched to the capability and objective of the
sensors they carry.
• Orbit selection vary in terms of altitude of the satellite and their
orientation and rotation relative to the earth.
• Based on that, the satellites used for remote sensing are generally
of 2 types:
– Geostationary satellites
• At altitudes of 36,000 km from earth’s surface, revolve at speeds
which match the rotation of earth and appear stationary with respect
to the earth.
• Allows the satellites to observe and collect information continuously
over specific areas. They maintain a fixed location with respect to
the earth’s surface.
• Eg: Weather and communication satellite.
• Due to its large altitude, used to monitor weather and cloud
patterns.
• Eg: India’s INSAT (Indian National Satellite System) series
Geostationary satellites
– Sun-synchronous satellites
• These are designed to follow an orbit, basically north-south, which in
conjunction with the earth’s west-east rotation, allows them to cover most of
the earth’s surface over a certain period of time.
• These are near-polar orbits, so named for the inclination of the orbit relative to
the line running between the North and South poles.
• These satellites are located at much lower altitudes, generally a few hundred
to a few thousand km’s.
• The revisit interval of these satellites may be any integral number of days.
• Therefore, useful for studying phenomena, vegetation vigor etc.
• Another element that defines these satellites is the Swath width. As a satellite
revolves around the earth, the sensor sees a certain portion of the earth’s
surface. The area imaged on the surface is the swath width.
• Therefore, most of the remote sensing satellites are defined by its Orbit,
altitude, revisit period, the swath width, its spatial resolution and spectral
resolution.
• Eg: Indian IRS (Indian Remote Sensing satellite) series
Sun-synchronous satellites
Swath Width
