Optical compressive sensing technologies for space applications: instrumental concepts and performance analysis

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study aimed at investigating the potential of Compressive Sensing (CS) technologies for optical space instruments. Besides assessing the pros and cons for a wide set of proposed instrumental concepts for space applications, the study analyzed in further detail two CS-based instrument concepts, each targeting a specific application: an UV-VIS hyperspectral imager on orbiter for stellar spectro-photometry and a MIR camera for sky observation and real-time detection of Near Earth Objects (NEO). The proposed UV-VIS hyperspectral imager relies on a classical CS approach and addresses the CS reconstruction of the full image in order to implement slitless spectrophotometry of stars. The CS-based MIR camera for NEO detection instead explores a novel approach aiming at information extraction without a prior full reconstruction of the image. Besides outlining the optical design of the instruments, its key elements and a pros and cons analysis of the architecture, this paper presents the performance assessment of these instruments for typical application scenarios by means of simulated data. The results showed that, from the point of view of data reconstruction quality, a good performance can be achieved by the designed instruments in terms of compression ratio (CR) and image reconstruction. In terms of system budgets, the CS architecture offered only some marginal benefits with respect to their traditional counterparts, mainly due to the lack of a compression board. Most advantages are instead provided in terms of downlink requirements and memory buffer.

Super-resolved compressive demonstrator for Earth Observation applications in the Medium Infrared: instrumental concept, optical design and expected performances

“…In other words, CS -leveraging on the concepts of sparsity, which can be referred to the characteristics of 'compressibility' of many natural signals, and of incoherence, which implies the use of proper coding masks -merges the sampling and compression phases into a single step, providing the possibility to efficiently reconstruct the image from a smaller number of samples than that dictated by the Shannon-Nyquist theorem [5]. Following the development of the first CS based instrument, there were several other studies that addressed the CS architecture for the implementation of instruments in different several application domains [6]- [7], including space applications [8]- [10]. The latter included not only Earth Observation, but also Planetary Exploration and Space Science [11].…”

A feasability study for a compressive sensing imager in the medium infrared for hotspot detection

“…Nevertheless, up to now very few examples of prototypes addressed the aerospace sector [7] . On the other hand, in recent years ESA has funded some studies to investigate the potential of CS for the construction of optical payloads based on this approach[7] [7]- [10] . Regarding super-resolution, some prototypes have been developed to demonstrate its feasibility [11]- [13] .…”

Compressive Sensing Imaging Spectrometer for UV-Vis Stellar Spectroscopy: Instrumental Concept and Performance Analysis

“…Concerning the space application domains, few studies have addressed the investigation of the potential of CS for Earth observation (EO) applications [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Among these, an ESA-funded study for the development of a laboratory demonstrator of a CS-based hyperspectral imager for Earth Observation [ 23 ] which highlighted some critical issues, such as stray light control and the need of very high-speed light modulator, can be mentioned.…”