Temperature and nonlinearity corrections for a photodiode array spectrometer used in the field

Temperature and nonlinearity effects are two important factors that limit the use of photodiode array spectrometers. Usually the spectrometer is calibrated at a known temperature against a reference source of a particular spectral radiance, and then it is used at different temperatures to measure sources of different spectral radiances. These factors are expected to be problematic for nontemperature-stabilized instruments used for in-the-field experiments, where the radiant power of the site changes continuously with the sun tilt. This paper describes the effect of ambient temperature on a nontemperature-stabilized linear photodiode array spectrometer over the temperature range from 5 °C to 40 °C. The nonlinearity effects on both signal amplification and different levels of radiant power have also been studied and are presented in this paper.