24 November 2010
An anomaly was recently raised concerning the intrinsic quality of the DMCii products.
The GSCDA-Coordinated Quality Control (GSCDA-CQC) coordinated with the quality control team from DMC to study the quality issues related to the different DMCii products.
In this context, the DMC team informed CQC that they have performed some core modifications and upgrades to the on-board processing as well as in the data downlink speed of UK- DMCii satellite, enabling DMCii to increase the quality of products to more easily meet GSCDA's 22m GSD imaging requirements.
In order to achieve these advancements, both the imaging capacity and the data downlink speed of the UK- DMCii satellite were increased by a factor of 2. The new high-speed data recording system now captures full 10-bit imagery from UK- DMCii 's imager, with resulting improvements to data quality from the current 8-bit data. Initially the 10-bit data will be processed to the standard 8-bit products that are currently produced, but data quality should improve as a result of on-board processing enhancements.
In the forthcoming second stage, DMCii team will ask CQC to evaluate some trial 16-bit data products which contain the full 10-bit imagery. Enhanced data depth will mean an increase of file size compared with the existing 8-bit files. However, the data quality should improve. DMCii plans to migrate their data supply to 16-bit products after a suitable period of evaluation.
The CQC will closely follow this activity with the DMCii team and provide further information as soon as possible.