SBIR-STTR Award

The focus of this research activity is the complete design of an end-to-end airborne hyper-spectral imaging system optimized for measurements of the coastal and open ocean environments. The system will integrate an unsupervised spectral processing system with a PC based real time processing workstation for the rapid detection, discrimination and quantification of components affecting the water quality and in water visibility. The proposed system will be based on the currently operational TENCAP Real-time Image Processing Spectrograph (TRIPS) which was optimized for similar environments. The TRIPS sensor includes several off-the-self components and already satisfies many of the project‚s unique requirements greatly reducing cost and potential risk. A trade study will be conducted as part of the sensor design, to optimize the system flexibility for ocean applications. A novel blazing process for the TRIPS holographic grating will be incorporated in the design to improve optical efficiency and polarization insensitivity. The integrated autonomous hyperspectral processing system will be augmented with automated georegis-tration; rapid image display and radiometric calibration will also be addressed. An existing TRIPS sensor will be used to verify the expected performance of the final system. COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Compact hyperspectral sensors with near real-time automated processing have enormous commercial value because of their broad applicability to medical imaging, mining and exploration, environmental monitoring, precision farming and industrial inspection. Accurate data compression is critical to the commercialization of technology due to the extremely high data rates produced by the sensor

The objective of this Phase 2 is the fabrication, assembly, integration, and testing of an end-to-end airborne hyperspectral system optimized for imaging and mapping of the coastal environment. The system design, as developed in the Phase 1 report, integrates an autonomous data acquisition system with a spectral processing system on a PC based workstation for the rapid detection, discrimination, and quantification of components affecting water quality, and bottom type. The designed system is based on currently available technology and on new components and software features, which are optimized to address the requirements of the coastal environment. The design of the autonomous hyperspectral imaging system incorporates several technical improvements dealing with real-time image display, geo-registration, sensor signal-to-noise performance, radiometric calibration, and software enhancements. The proposed imaging system improvements are specifically tailored to meet the coastal mapping requirements but they also provide an enhanced capability for general-purpose imaging. The system design provides the specification for system component identification and optimization. COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Hyperspectral imaging systems have a number of commercial applications both in the microscopic and in the macroscopic scale. Major proven applications of airborne imaging include mineral exploration, environmental pollution monitoring, precision farming, vegetation stress monitoring, infrastructure, and urban area planning.