Performance of Hyperspectral Imaging with Drone Swarms

Abstract

The ongoing proliferation and diversification of remote sensing platforms offers greater flexibility to select from a range of hyperspectral imagers as payloads. The emergence of low-cost unmanned aircraft systems (drones) and their launch flexibility presents an opportunity to maximize spectral resolution while scaling both daily spatial coverage and spatial resolution simultaneously by operating synchronized swarms. This article presents a model to compare the performance of hyperspectral-imaging platforms in terms of their spatial coverage and spatial resolution envelope. The authors develop a data acquisition framework and use the model to compare the achievable performance among existing airborne and spaceborne hyperspectral imaging vehicles and drone swarms. The results show that, subject to cost and operational limitations, a platform implemented with drone swarms has the potential to provide greater spatial resolution for the same daily ground coverage compared to existing airborne platforms.