Design and demonstration of airborne imaging system for target detection based on area-array camera and push-broom hyperspectral imager

Hyperspectral imaging technology refers to the ability to acquire a full optical spectrum at each pixel in an image. In the field of target detection, although hyperspectral imagers can detect point target formed by one or several pixels with high spectral resolution, it is difficult to realize the real-time recognition of the point target without the prior spectral information of the target or high spatial resolution geometric information of the target. And it is also difficult for airborne hyperspectral imager to improve spectral resolution and spatial resolution simultaneously. In this paper, we propose airborne imaging system scheme consisting of a compact push-broom hyperspectral imager and a high-resolution area-array panchromatic camera, and introduce the main methods of system design, performance evaluation and data processing. The results of airborne flight experiment show that the hyperspectral imager and area-array camera have ground sample distance (GSD) of 0.15 m and 0.036 m respectively at a flight height of 1500 m, and can achieve approximately 170 spectral channels at a range of 0.4-2.45 mu m and a total field of view (TFOV) of 12 degrees. The airborne imaging system can provide both spatial and spectral information of the target with higher accuracy, which can meet the needs of real-time target spectral detection and recognition, and have important reference value of airborne hyperspectral imaging technology in the application field of target detection.