Prototyping a compressive line sensing hyperspectral imaging sensor

In many space-borne surveillance missions, hyperspectral imaging (HSI) sensors are essential to enhance the ability to analyze and classify oceanic and terrestrial parameters and objects/areas of interest. A significant technical challenge is that the amount of raw data acquired by these sensors will begin to exceed the data transmission bandwidths between the spacecraft and the ground station using classical approaches such as imaging onto a detector array. To address such an issue, the compressive line sensing (CLS) imaging concept, originally developed for energy-efficient active laser imaging, is adopted in the design of a hyperspectral imaging sensor. CLS HSI imaging is achieved using a digital micromirror device (DMD) spatial light modulator. A DMD generates a series of 2D binary sensing patterns from a codebook that can be used to encode cross-track spatial-spectral slices in a push-broom type imaging device. In this paper, the development of a testbed using the TI DLP NIRscan™ Nano Evaluation Module to investigate the CLS HSI concept is presented. Initial test results are discussed.