A Study of Diurnal Variation of Solar Radiation Over Baghdad City

The appearance of a scene illuminated by direct and indirect solar radiation depends on a variety of factors. Among these factors are the viewing geometry, scene structure reflectance, illumination and atmospheric conditions. As time elapses, these factors change altering the appearance of the scene. Sequence images of a scene collected over time are valuable in studying the scene appearance variation. This can lead to novel applications and help in enhancing the existing methods that are leading to environments which can be controlled. So, a focused statistical analysis study to the sequence captured images is introduced. This has been done by utilizing sunlight/skylight as a source to illuminate a scene inside a tilted optical system facing the equator. Analysis of such sequence provides an understanding to the effects that the illumination may cause on system performance. This is achieved by studying the variation of some statistical estimators as a function of time as well as window's aperture area, testing the best quantitative measurements to simulate the diurnal intensity variation with time and hence investigating an illuminance effect upon image's contrast.