NUMERICAL EVALUATION AND APPLICATION-ORIENTED ANALYSIS FOR FORWARD AND INVERSE RATIONAL FUNCTION MODELS OF TERRAIN-INDEPENDENT CASE IN SATELLITE IMAGERY

Sorosh Jahandideh,Nasser Najibi,Ali Azizi

doi:10.3846/20296991.2014.962731

Sorosh Jahandideh, Nasser Najibi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3846/20296991.2014.962731

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Abstract

Terrain-independent Rational Polynomial Coefficients (RPCs) are considered as most important part of the optical satellite and aerial imagery data processing especially those ones with high resolution since the proposed RPCs by the aerospace companies have some limitations in particular for using directly by the geoscientists in environmental studies and other Earth observation applications. While the inverse RPCs have more advantageous rather than direct ones, in this study, a new approach is presented in order to provide the inverse RPCs from direct ones and also to satisfy satellite imagery products users. In order to do this, first a spatial 3D-cubic is going to be fitted to the study area approximately including necessary altimetry layers numbers. Next, a range of virtual control points are being created in those altimetry layers randomly and then these points are going to be shifted to the image space by means of given direct RPCs. Hence, the inverse RPCs computes from the direct ones by space resection technique. Finally, the ground coordinates for the corresponding points have derived from different space intersection methodologies, direct RPCs and also inverse ones. Moreover, comparative tests have been developed to assess the effects of different altimetry layers numbers and also the number of virtual control points on the quality of derived inverse RPCs. It is demonstrated here that the precision of derived RPCs are increasing as much as the number of altimetry layers and control points increase. The proposed methodology, computations, data processing and results evaluation are discussed in details.

Highlights

Prior to the use of rational functions in military applications and facilities, the physical equations and models such as coplinearity equation were using to transfer from object space coordinates to image space ones (Sohn et al 2005; Lin, Yuan 2008; Najibi, Abedini 2010)
It is needless to say that Earth surface studies are very critical in these days (e.g. Sarabandi et al 2008; Najibi, Jin 2013; Najibi, Arabsheibani 2013; Najibi et al 2013), this demand asks for more sophisticated Earth observations sensors and other useful imagery applications especially for environment studies to create new advanced method (Tao et al 2004; Najibi, Abedini 2013) and open up the rational functions field, but the researchers did not get into details about them (Tao, Hu 2002)
The initial studies to assess the possibility of using rational functions instead of the physical functions and comprehensive study of them were done from aerial imagery and photogrammetry view (Dowman, Dolloff 2000; Li et al 2009)

Summary

Introduction

Prior to the use of rational functions in military applications and facilities, the physical equations and models such as coplinearity equation were using to transfer from object space coordinates to image space ones (Sohn et al 2005; Lin, Yuan 2008; Najibi, Abedini 2010). The initial studies to assess the possibility of using rational functions instead of the physical functions and comprehensive study of them were done from aerial imagery and photogrammetry view (Dowman, Dolloff 2000; Li et al 2009). This inevitably opened a new interesting field for further studies and experiments.

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