EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
NEW YORK City College of Technology
Electrical and Telecommunication Engineering Technology Department
EET 3132 Remote Sensing
Submitted To: Prof. Viviana Vladutescu
Submitted By: Zeeshan Ahmad
ID: 23390657
Submission Date: 03/22/2016
FIELD TRIP CITY COLLEGE(CUNY) ZEESHAN AHMAD
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
Topic: Field Trip to Grove School of Engineering at the City College of New York
Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory (ORS)
Electrical Engineering Department
Date: 03/16/2016
On March 16, 2016 around 02:00PM our EET 3132 Remote Sensing class fellows and
our Prof. Viviana Vladutescu went to Optical Remote Sensing Lab on 5th floor, Room T553
within Electrical Engineering Department at the City College of New York. Our primary interest
was to know about the practical working of few remote sensing instruments which were located
on the roof of Electrical Engineering Department, and were under the supervision of ORS lab.
So, we went to the roof and saw that there were few remote sensing instruments like
Ceilometer, Backscatter Lidar, Multi Filter Rotating Shadow Radiometer and Microwave
Radiometer. Our Prof. Viviana Vladutescu explained each and every instrument one by one.
These instruments were in real time working state and were collecting different data from the
atmosphere. In the meantime we took few group pictures with those instruments. After the
professor explained everything about those instruments, we went downstairs to ORS Lab where
we saw the collected data of these instruments. We have learned a lot from this trip. We thanked
to our professor and everyone left.
A brief introduction of ORS lab and those instruments are as follows.
Introduction to ORS Lab: - The Optical Remote Sensing lab is established in the Electrical
Engineering Department of The City College of New York. They use remotely sensed and
ground based data to develop new technologies in remote sensing and on improvement of
algorithms retrieval of geophysical parameters from the environmental monitoring of land,
atmosphere and ocean.
Following are few instruments they use to collect data from atmosphere.
Backscatter Lidar: - “LIDAR is a remote sensing technology that measure the distance by
illuminating a target with the laser and analyzing the reflected light.” It uses a beam of light
while measuring the round trip time and the intensity of energy. The beam of light is reflected by
small atmospheric particles along the sight of light when there is no solid target.
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
This system currently using 5 different channels of wavelength at 1064nm (infrared),
532nm (Green), 355nm (ultra violet), including two Raman channels 407nm for water and
387nm for nitrogen to collect the data. This data is digitized by a computer equipped with
National Instruments digital I/O card, DIO-32F. Each signal is controlled and configured by the
host computer. Its range resolution is from 500m to 15km.
Figure-1 Cover of Lidar on roof
and
backscatter lidar operation
This picture of backscatter lidar operation is taken from http://sky.ccny.cuny.edu/
FIELD TRIP CITY COLLEGE(CUNY) ZEESHAN AHMAD
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
Ceilometers: - This instrument also use beam of light or laser to determine the base of clouds. It
can be also used to determine the aerosol concentration within the atmosphere. It consist of laser
and receiver in the same location. A laser is sent through atmosphere where tiny fraction of the
light is scatter by aerosol. The size of particles is similar to the wave length of the laser. A small
component of this scatter light is received by the receiver. The receiving time is transformed into
a spatial range by using the speed of light.
Distance= C*𝛿*t/2
Figure-2 Laser Ceilometer on roof on Grove College of engineering CCNY
CIMEL Sun Photometer: - These sun photometers have specific number on NASA AERONET
(Aerosol Robotic Network). The one on city college, CIMEL Sun Photometer CE318 is #237 in
the NASA AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network).
FIELD TRIP CITY COLLEGE(CUNY) ZEESHAN AHMAD
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
It is microprocessor, stepper motor robot which has two components “Optical head
containing the sun collimator without lens and the sky collimator with lenses and filter wheel”.
In this sun tracking is controlled by four quadrant detector which is temporarily stored in
memory and once every hour is uploaded to NASA by geosynchronous satellite uplink.
It is multichannel radiometer which measure direct solar irradiation and sky radiance at
earth surface. It has selected wavelengths for measuring which are 340, 380, 440, 670, 870, 1020
nm (aerosols), and 936 nm (water vapor). It is weather proof and requires little maintenance
during adverse weather conditions. It takes measurement during day time.
Figure- 3 CIMEL sun photometer along with its respective parameters
MFRSR: - MFRSR stands for multi-filter rotating shadow band radiometer. It is passive
instrument that measures global and diffuse components of solar irradiances at six different
wavelengths (415, 500, 615, 673, 870, and 940 nm). The instrument makes measurements
simultaneously on each channel and is displayed in near real time updated every 15minuts.
Instruments are deployed on sites with a marine backup battery which requires little attention or
FIELD TRIP CITY COLLEGE(CUNY) ZEESHAN AHMAD
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
service. Each unit is connected to the internet through a MOXA DE-311 Serial to Ethernet
converter installed in each control box located on the site roof and mapped to a data collection
computer. Data is downloaded every fifteen minutes, converted and is transmitted to central data
server by controlling script files using file transfer protocol (FTP) clients from script FTP and
visual basic programs which generate command files executed by the computer's System
Scheduler.
Figure-4
Multi-filter rotating shadow band radiometer at Grove school of Engineering (CCNY)
MICROWAVE RADIOMETER: - “the Radiometric Profiling Radiometer, model MP-3000A,
produces vertical profiles from the surface to 10 km, producing high-resolution temperature,
relative humidity and water vapor profiles, and low-resolution liquid profiles”.
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EET 3132 REMOTE SENSING
It incorporates two radio frequency subsystems is same cabinet sharing the same antenna.
The temperature profiling subsystem utilizes sky brightness temperature observations at selected
frequencies between 51 and 59 GHz. The water vapor profiling subsystem utilizes sky brightness
temperature observations at selected frequencies between 22 and 30 GHz.
It also has surface Meteorological sensor and a Rain sensor which measures temperature,
relative humidity and barometric pressure and rain. Internally mounted infrared thermometer
improves the measurement of water vapors and cloud liquid profile density profiles using passive
technology. So, there is no emission of detectable radiations.
The instruments is controlled by computer software which generated real time graph
which include Meteorological sensor time series, Brightness temperature time series,
Temperature, Water Vapor, Liquid Water, Relative Humidity Profiles, and column integrated
vapor and liquid.
Liquid water on the antenna can cause errors in the observed brightness. So, to minimize
the error the radiometer radome is made hydrophobic repel which blow air if there is water drops
or snow on the radome.
Figure- 5 Microwave Radiometer at Grove school of Engineering (CCNY)
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