Automatic Satellite Image Navigation

Abstract

The satellite image navigation system for AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) imagery at the Naval Postgraduate School, referred to as Avian, has been modified from an operator interactive procedure to an automatic navigation procedure. The interactive procedure, based on operator identification of discrete landmarks, has been replaced with a procedure which utilizes the Defense Mapping Agency's (DMA) World Vector Shoreline (WVS) as a reference. Binary shoreline images are created from the satellite images and correlated with the WVS reference shoreline using a sum of absolute differences matching technique. The correlation is performed using reference and search windows selected from full resolution sub-scenes of the WVS and satellite image. Ten images were navigated with resulting accuracies of approximately 1.3 km. The resultant earth location was at least as accurate as the original Avian and did not depend upon expertise of the operator, as the original Avian procedure does. Thus, the automatic Avian procedure eliminated the subjectivity inherent in the interactive landmarking, while reducing the amount of expertise required to perform the navigation task.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA240895

Entities

People

  • Brian C. Spaulding

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Satellites
  • Circular Orbits
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Programming
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Databases
  • Digital Images
  • Geography
  • Geometry
  • Grids
  • High Resolution
  • Image Processing
  • Navigation
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Satellite Orbits
  • Spacecraft
  • World Geodetic System

Readers

  • Atmospheric Remote Sensing.
  • Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Data Science/Digital Signal Processing.
  • Inertial Navigation Systems.

Technology Areas

  • Space