Atmospheric compensation of prisma data by means of a learning based approach

Atmospheric compensation (AC) allows the retrieval of the reflectance from the measured at-sensor radiance and is a fundamental and critical task for the quantitative exploitation of hyperspectral data. Recently, a learning-based (LB) approach, named LBAC, has been proposed for the AC of airborne hyperspectral data in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) spectral range. LBAC makes use of a parametric regression function whose parameters are learned by a strategy based on synthetic data that accounts for (1) a physics-based model for the radiative transfer, (2) the variability of the surface reflectance spectra, and (3) the effects of random noise and spectral miscalibration errors. In this work we extend LBAC with respect to two different aspects: (1) the platform for data acquisition and (2) the spectral range covered by the sensor. Particularly, we propose the extension of LBAC to spaceborne hyperspectral sensors operating in the VNIR and short-wave infrared (SWIR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We specifically refer to the sensor of the PRISMA (PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa) mission, and the recent Earth Observation mission of the Italian Space Agency that offers a great opportunity to improve the knowledge on the scientific and commercial applications of spaceborne hyperspectral data. In addition, we introduce a curve fitting-based procedure for the estimation of column water vapor content of the atmosphere that directly exploits the reflectance data provided by LBAC. Results obtained on four different PRISMA hyperspectral images are presented and discussed.