Difference between a “camera at three broad spectral bands” (sic.) and a standard RGB camera?

Question

I am doing a research that involves aerial photography, specifically forest surveying. In one paper, "Automated tree crown delineation from imagery based on morphological techniques", I found this sentence where they describe the equipment used:

The aerial multispectral imagery [...] was acquired [...] using an Illunis XMV-4021C camera at three broad spectral bands: blue (with center wavelength of 450 nm), green (550 nm), and red (625 nm).

I couldn't find any information about that particular camera, nor anything related "broad spectral bands".

Is the camera described in the paper substantially different from a standard consumer compact camera with a CMOS sensor, e.g. a Canon IXUS? If yes, on which spectral aspects?

Answer 1

It does not seem to be substantially different from standard CMOS sensor other than the fact that most Illunis cameras seem to be based on CCD rather than CMOS chips. The three color bands centered on 450nm, 550nm. and 625nm are certainly similar to most Bayer masked sensors in consumer cameras.

What it does seem to be substantially different from is other devices that have been previously used for tree crown delineation via aerial photography. Previous attempts apparently used imaging devices which only image using a single spectral band camera. From this paper that appears to be the same source of the quote in the question (emphasis added):

Current tree crown delineation methods normally employ the digital-count differences between crowns and surroundings in an individual spectral band or an individual component of the image, brightness and color differences between crowns and surroundings are rarely utilized together to localize crowns.

Basically, what the paper seems to be saying is that previous attempts to do such measurements did not utilize imaging equipment that simultaneously compared brightness differences and color differences.