Earth observation by the adaptive wavelength optical image sensor

An AOTF (Acousto-Optic Tunable Filter) and a LCTF (Liquid Crystal Tunable Filter) are bandpass filters with a capability of adapting observation wavelength as desired almost instantaneously and with high spectral resolution. When a sensor with these filters is used for the earth observation, a user can change the observation wavelength according to the demand. The change can be made manually during the observation from an air plane. If the observation is from a satellite then the change can be made by the command from the ground station in real time. Thus the very useful data for observation purpose can be obtained through use of a sensor with these filters. Furthermore, these filters are suitable for polarization observation which can provide another valuable information to the multi-spectral observation data. In this paper, the comparison of these adaptive sensors with a conventional ones and the problems for loading such an adaptive sensor are described.