SMILE CORRECTION IN THE ENMAP GROUND SEGMENT PROCESSOR: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Abstract. The Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) is an upcoming German hyperspectral satellite mission aiming to observe and characterize the Earth’s environment on a global scale. In course of a the development of the EnMAP ground segment processing chain, measures were taken to deal with probable spectral and spatial distortion effects of the sensor, that can only be addressed by post-processing once the satellite platform is launched into orbit. One of these effects is a pixel- and band-wise spectral distortion, the so called sensor smile effect. This paper describes the methods and performance of the smile correction process as implemented for the EnMAP ground segment processing chain, explaining design choices and difficulties currently encountered with the proposed approach and evaluating the results of the smile correction on basis of simulated EnMAP hyperspectral data.