Processing Raw Advanced Baseline Imager Data to Level 1b on the Ground

Processing raw data from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites R-series (GOES-R) in to geolocated radiances and imagery on the ground involves several steps. First, the downlinked data has to be uncompressed, detector samples have to be radiometrically calibrated, navigated and resampled to produce pixels that are located on an invariant output grid, referred to as the Fixed Grid. Each of these steps involves processing the Earth observation data along with other auxiliary observations of calibration targets, stars and space looks. Data from all the 16 ABI bands in each of the three standard operating modes of full disk, CONUS and mesoscale has to be processed within specified latencies and made rebroadcast throughout the hemisphere. The peak raw data rate from ABI is about 61.1 Mbps and processing this data continuously requires unique ground system design. This presentation describes the steps involved in processing the raw data to higher level radiance products on the ground.