Equipment

The first equipment to be integrated in WATERHYPERNET is the PANTHYR (“PAN-and-Tilt HYperspectral Radiometer”) system described by [Vansteenwegen et al, 2019]. The PANTHYR system consists of two TRIOS-RAMSES hyperspectral radiometers (one radiance, one irradiance), covering the wavekength range 400-900nm, mounted on a FLIR PTU-D48 pan-tilt unit and controlled by purpose-made electronics and software. Auxiliary equipment includes a GNSS receiver, a 4G router and antenna and a simple RGB camera for water and sky images as well as enclosures, mechanical brackets, cabling and site-specific power supply and mechanical fixtures.

  • The first PANTHYR prototype was tested at Aqua Alta Oceanographic Tower in 2018 during the FRM4SOC project intercomparison exercise [Tilstone et al, 2020].
  • Refined PANTHYR prototypes were deployed and functioned autonomously in 2019-20 providing continuous data for many months at Aqua Alta Oceanographic Tower in the Adriatic Sea, the RT1 Blue Innovation Platform outside the harbour of Oostende and Blankaart water reservoir in Belgium. A beta release of data was used for the validation of Sentinel-2A, Sentinel-2B, Landsat-8 and Planetscope/Dove cubesats by [Vanhellemont, 2020] and for evaluation of PRISMA by [Giardino et al, 2020].
  • Production versions of the PANTHYR system will be deployed at multiple coastal and inland water site in 2021 with public distribution of data in near real-time.

A second radiometer, for future inclusion in the WATERHYPERNET, is under development by the H2020/HYPERNETS consortium. The HYPERNETS project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 775983.

HYPSTAR_Website

HYPSTAR® is an autonomous hyperspectral radiometer system designed for surface reflectance validation of optical satellite data products. HYPSTAR captures radiance and irradiance measurements.

A HYPSTAR system consists of a hyperspectral VNIR spectrometer, an optional SWIR spectrometer, and a simple RGB imaging camera alongside the hyperspectral measurements. It also includes an LED source for calibration monitoring, a pan-tilt mechanism, auxiliary sensors (pressure, humidity, temperature, rain, light, two external cameras), and a standardised data stream for easy and systematic exploitation by downstream validation networks WATERHYPERNET and LANDHYPERNET.