Band selection in Sentinel-2 satellite for agriculture applications

Various indices are used for assessing vegetation and soil properties in satellite remote sensing applications. Some indices, such as NDVI and NDWI, are defined based on the sensitivity and significance of specific bands. Nowadays, remote sensing capability with a good number of bands and high spatial resolution is available. Instead of classification based on indices, this paper explores direct classification using selected bands. Recently launched Sentinel-2A is adopted as a case study. Three methods are compared, where the first approach utilizes traditional indices and the latter two approaches adopt specific bands (Red, NIR, and SWIR) and full bands of on-board sensors, respectively. It is shown that a better classification performance can be achieved by directly using the three selected bands compared with the one using indices, while the use of all 13 bands can further improve the performance. Therefore, it is recommended the new approach can be applied for Sentinel-2A image analysis and other wide applications.