Noise evaluation of early images for Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager.

This study performed an on-orbit evaluation of noise level for the Operational Land Imager (OLI) onboard Landsat 8 using early images over ground homogeneous sites. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) were higher than 160 of OLI nine bands at typical radiance level, while the noise equivalent radiance difference (NE Delta L) and the noise equivalent reflectance difference (NE Delta rho.) were respectively lower than 0.8 W/m(2)/mu m/sr and 0.002. Compared to pre-launch predictions, the on-orbit low noise and high SNR almost satisfied requirements for OLI bands, and can provide a prior knowledge for uncertainty analysis of OLI images in monitoring land surface, oceanic, and atmospheric status. (C)2014 Optical Society of America