Parametric Image Quality Study of Metamaterial Based Satellite Image Sensors

Image chain simulation studies of a hypothetical earth observation satellite (GOKAY-1) in the presence of metamaterial based image sensors is performed. A number of metamaterial super cell configurations are compared and tradeoff between the modulation transfer function (MTF) and signal to noise ratio (SNR) figures of merit was investigated. The SNR values of 2 × 2, 4 × 4 and 6 × 6 super cell configurations with 64 time delay integration (TDI) steps yielded, SNR = 5, 22 and 49 values, respectively. As the size of the metaxel supercell increase from 0.66μm to 1.32μm and 1.96μm the MTF results got lower performance as indicated by the corresponding MTF curves. Metamaterial based satellite image sensors could lead to better performing earth observation satellites (EOS), satellite image sensors, and thereby satellite imaging cameras.