Self-Calibration Strip Bundle Adjustment of High-Resolution Satellite Imagery

Abstract

The attitude accuracy of high-resolution satellite images is the main factor affecting their geometric positioning accuracy. Bundle block adjustment is the main method for realizing the simultaneous estimation of attitude models for overlapping images over a large area. In the current research on the joint positioning of high-resolution multi-line array satellite images, the adjustment is usually carried out with the view or load as a unit without considering the consistency of the error of the same platform. In this paper, we develop a self-calibration strip bundle adjustment scheme that considers the boresight misalignment among multiple cameras. By introducing the installation angle between multiple loads, we fully utilized their geometric constraint relationship with the same platform to establish a unified attitude compensation model for multiple loads. The experimental results of the ZiYuan3 (ZY-3) satellite image show that, when the ground control points (GCPs) are laid only at four corner points of the image, the image plane and elevation accuracies are 1.85 m and 1.87 m after an adjustment using this method, which can achieve comparable accuracies with those obtained by a traditional program based on an adjustment with more GCPs.