Principles of Remote Sensing [GI21301]

ASSIGNMENT-1

SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. Manohar Yadev

SUBMITED BY:

Abhishek patel

Mtech 1st Semester

MNNIT Alllahabad, Payagraj

Uttar pradesh
Q.1.Explain why optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is preferred for spectral bands selection
in Earth imaging systems.

Explanation-

Recently, optical remote sensing has seen a steep increase in the number of spectral bands in acquired data,
going from multispectral to hyperspectral. This increase in spectral accuracy is delivering more information,
allowing a whole range of new and more precise applications. In hyperspectral data, the spectral bands are
generally divided proportionally over the spectral range. But, one can ask whether all of the wavebands are
actually necessary for a particular application. It has been shown that for classification tasks, it is often
sufficient to select only a dozen well-defined bands to get adequate results.

The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is the complete range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation
emitted from the sun, ranging from the extremely short Gamma rays to the longer radio waves. The incident
energy emitted from the sun is never destroyed; it is absorbed, reflected, or transmitted by an object. Of the
total EM spectrum, visible light comprises a tiny sliver. The visible portion of the EM (.4 - .7 micrometers) is
especially important in assessing the biomass (health of pigmentation) of vegetation. Healthy plants tend to
have high chlorophyll content. In the visible spectrum, chlorophyll absorbs red and blue light and reflects
green light. Greater chlorophyll content will result in an increased reflectance in the green portion of the
EM, and producing a visual green appearance of a healthy plant.

Optical radiation is part of the electromagnetic It is subdivided into ultra voilet (UV), the spectrum
of light visible for man (VIS) and infrared radition (IR). It ranges between wavelengths of 100 nm to
1 mm. Electromagnetic waves in this range obey the laws of optics.

Urban environments are typically complex and heterogeneous structures and challenging to map their
ecological conditions . The distribution of varied urban surface materials has an impact on the surrounding
environment . This has requested the detailed accounting of surface materials and its properties, such as
magnitude, abundance, location, geometry, and spatial pattern . Additionally, the high diversity in urban
environments has attracted the significance for monitoring and updating information on a changing urban
world . Urban surface materials show high variability in their properties for color, coating, degradation, and
illumination of material ; moreover, the highest variability was found in roofing materials . The mapping of
roof materials has been exciting due to the challenges occur in roof mapping such as the high variability of
roof surfaces (shape, slope, and texture), complex structures on roofs (solar, heating, and air-conditioning
installations), and the wide range of roofing material available on the market (metal, plastic, ceramic, etc.)
In remote sensing, imaging spectroscopy (IS) is also referred as hyperspectral imaging (HSI), which integrates
conventional imaging with high spectral and spatial information of object. Hyperspectral remote sensing is
economic than conventional surveying since it allows to study vast land surface in less time and relatively less
expensive . Initially, IS in remote sensing was only limited to multispectral imaging. The complex urban area
requires high spatial and spectral detail of an object . The urban mapping was at low pace due to lower spatial
and spectral dimensions of multispectral imageries . The advent of airborne HSI sensors has raised new
opportunities in urban remote sensing applications, due to a combination of high spectral and high spatial
resolution in HSI images . HSI sensor stores information of a pixel in hundreds of spectral bands which
enables the accurate identification of objects or classes which have similar spectral characteristics . HSI
collects a wide continuous narrowband reflectance information across the electromagnetic spectrum precisely
400–2500 nm which provides higher separability features for characterizing complex urban objects .
Increasing spectral and spatial image resolution allows features to be segregated, and more researchers have
been successful in using various spectral indices and spectral unmixing methods to isolate features .
Collectively, HSI has been advantageous from the last decade for the superior level of spectral detail it
provides compared to the multispectral imaging
Although HSI provides higher feature separability qualities, it poses greater demands on the storage and
processing environment, due to its greater number of bands . Moreover, adjacent bands show an inherent
redundancy in pixel properties . Increasing the number of bands does not proportionally increase qualitative
information; therefore, HSI encounters the Hughes phenomenon. That is, for a given training sample, the
accuracy reaches to a certain threshold number of bands, and further accuracy decreases as the number of
bands increases . Hence, HSI’s dimensionality increased both the computational burden and the need for
efficient data reduction methods. Most remote sensing applications do not use all the available spectral bands.
Moreover, the customized remote sensing applications seek to retain the relevant and vital information for the
classification. The hyperspectral data also possess redundant information in its adjacent bands which can raise
computational burden and complexity . Therefore, dimensionality reduction methods such as feature selection
and band selection methods become essential and popular.

Q.2.How angle of incidence, energy signal wavelength, and surface roughness affect the reflection from
an earth surface feature. Explain with justification.
Expanation-

Energy Interaction with Atmosphere-

Irrespective of source, all radiation detected by remote sensors passes through some distance, or path
length of atmosphere. The path length involved can vary widely. For example, space photography
results from sunlight that passes through the full thickness of the earth’s atmosphere twice on its
journey from source to sensor. On the other hand, an airborne thermal sensor detects energy emitted
directly from objects on the earth, so a single, relatively short atmospheric path length is involved.
The net effect of the atmosphere varies with these differences in path length and also varies with the
magnitude of the energy signal being sensed, the atmospheric conditions present, and the
wavelengths involved.

These effects are caused principally through the mechanisms of absorption, atmospheric scattering
and reflection.

Rayleigh scattering (sometimes referred to as molecular scattering) occurs when the effective
diameter of the matter (usually air molecules air molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen in the
atmosphere) is many times (usually< 0.1 times) smaller than the wavelength of the incident EMR.
The amount of scattering is inversely related to the fourth power of wavelength of radiation. For
example, ultraviolet light at 0.3 µm most Rayleigh scattering takes place in the upper 4.5 km of the
atmosphere. It is responsible for the blue appearance of the sky. The shorter violet and blue
wavelengths are more efficiently scattered than the longer green and red wavelengths. That is why
most remote sensing systems avoid detecting and recording wavelengths in the ultraviolet and blue
portions of the spectrum.

Mie Scattering (also referred to as non – molecular scattering) takes place in the lower 4.5 km of the
atmosphere, where there may be many essentially spherical particles present with diameters
approximately equal to the size of the wavelength of the incident energy. The actual size of the
particles may range from 0.1 to 10 times the wavelength of the incident energy. For visible light, the
main scattering agents are dust and other particles ranging from a few tenths of the micrometer to
several micrometers in diameter. Fig. 2.2 shows the scattering of electromagnetic radiation.

Refraction
Refraction is the deflection of EM radiation as it passes from one medium with one refractive index
to a medium with a different refractive index. Refractive index is defined as the ratio or the speed of
light in a vacuum to the speed of light in the medium and is calculated by-

n = Refractive index.
Fig.1

C = Speed of light in vacuum.

Cn = Speed of light in medium

In the Earth's atmosphere temperature, compositions and humidity all affect the density which
affects the refractive index. Serious errors in location due to refraction can occur in images formed
from energy detected at high altitude or at acute angle. However, these location errors are
predictable by Snell’s law and can be removed.
The angle that the radiation (Fig. 1) will be bent is defined by Snells Law:

n1sinα=n2sinβ

n1=refractive index of first medium.

n2= refractive index of second medium.

sinα = angle of incidence.

sinβ =angle of refraction.

Reflection
Reflection is the process whereby radiation ‘bounces off’ an object like the top of a cloud, a water
body, or the terrestrial earth. Reflection differs from scattering in that the direction associated with
scattering is unpredictable but in case of reflection it is predicable. Reflection exhibits fundamental
characteristics that are important in the remote sensing. First, the incident radiation, the reflected
radiation and a vertical to the surface from which the angle of incident and reflection are measured
all lie in the same plane. Second, the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection are approximately
equal.

A considerable amount of incident radiant flux from the sun is reflected from the top of clouds and
other material in the atmosphere. A substantial amount of this energy is reradiated back to space. The
reflection principles that apply to clouds also apply to the terrain.

Energy Intreactions with Earth Surface Features

When electromagnetic energy is incident on any given earth surface feature, three fundamental
energy interactions with the feature are possible. This is illustrated in Fig. 2.4 for an element of the
volume of a water body. Various fractions of the energy incident on the element are reflected,
absorbed, and/ or transmitted. The amount of radiant energy onto, off of, or through a surface per
unit time is called radiant flux (Φ) and is measured in watts (W).

Applying the principle of conservation of energy, the interrelationship between these three energy
interactions can be expressed as

E1 (λ) =ER (λ) +EA (λ) +ET (λ) (2.3)

where,

E1 = incident energy

ER = reflected energy

EA = absorbed energy

ET = transmitted energy

All energy components are function of wavelength λ.

Fig.2
In above equation two points concerning this relationship should be noted. First, the proportions of
energy reflected, absorbed, and transmitted will vary for different earth features, depending on their
material type and condition. These differences permit us to distinguish different features on an
image. Second, the wavelength dependency means that, even within a given feature type, the
proportion of reflected, absorbed, and transmitted energy will vary at different wavelengths. Thus,
two features may be indistinguishable in one spectral range and be very different in another
wavelength band.

In remote sensing the radiation reflected from targets. We refer to two types of reflection is measured
reflection from a target: can be specular reflection and diffuse reflection. For a smooth surface
specular or mirror-like reflection occurs where all (or almost all) of the energy is directed away from
the surface in a single direction. Diffuse reflection occurs when the surface is rough and the energy is
reflected almost uniformly in all directions. Most earth surface features lie somewhere between
perfectly specular or perfectly diffuse reflectors. Fig’s ‘a’ and ‘b’ illustrate specular and diffused
reflection. Whether a particular target reflects specularly or diffusely, or somewhere in between,
depends on the surface roughness of the feature in comparison to the wavelength of the incoming
radiation. If the wavelengths are much smaller than the surface variations or the particle sizes that
make up the surface, diffuse reflection will dominate. For example, fine-grained sand would appear
fairly smooth to long wavelength microwaves but would appear quite rough to the visible
wavelengths.

Diffuse reflections contain spectral information on the “color” of the reflecting surface, whereas
specular reflections do not. Hence, in remote sensing, we are most often interested in measuring the
diffuse reflectance properties of terrain features.

This is measured as a function of wavelength and is called spectral reflectance, ρ(λ).

It is can be expressed as
Where ρ(λ) is expressed as a percentage.

The spectral response of objects can be built from the measured reflected energy for different
wavelengths. The spectral response of a material to different wavelengths of EMR can be
represented graphically as a Spectral Reflectance Curve.

The comparison of spectral reflectance curves of different objects one can distinguish between them.
For example, water and vegetation may reflect somewhat similarly in the visible wavelengths but are
almost always separable in the infrared. Fig. 2.7 shows typical spectral reflectance curves for three
basic types of earth features: healthy green vegetation, dry bare soil, and clear lake water. These
curves indicate how much incident energy would be reflected from the surface, and subsequently
recorded by a remote sensing instrument. At a given wavelength, the higher the reflectance, the
brighter the object appears in an image.