SNR Analysis of a Spaceborne Hyperspectral Imager

Hyperspectral imagers as remote sensing devices are getting more popular. Taking the image in different narrow spectral bands, instead of a single wide spectral band, gives much more insight information about the scene. But since the spectral band decreases considerably, signal reaching the sensor also decreases. This brings a trade-off between spatial resolution and spectral resolution. A detailed SNR (Signal to Noise ratio) analysis is commonly required to decide spatial and spectral resolutions and additionally to decide some optical parameters such as optical aperture and optical transmission. In this paper, SNR analysis of a spaceborne hyperspectral imager is realized through a preliminary optical design. We mainly focused on the effect of optical transmission (tau(optics)) to the SNR.