A new image mosaicking approach for the multiple camera system of the optical remote sensing satellite GaoFen1

ABSTRACTThe GaoFen1 (GF1) optical remote sensing satellite is the first in China’s series of high-resolution civilian satellites and is equipped with four wide field of view (WFV) cameras. High accuracy image mosaicking depends on the geometrical quality of the stitched satellite imagery. This letter proposes a high accuracy image mosaicking approach based on combining multiple WFV cameras into a big virtual camera (BVC). In this method, a BVC is created according to the rigorous imaging model of a single camera, from which a final stitched image and corresponding high accuracy rational function model (RFM) can be obtained simultaneously. WFV images from GF1 and reference digital elevation models from ZiYuan3 are used to validate the proposed method. The experimental results validate that seamless mosaicking can be achieved directly from the geometrical relationship of the imaging model of the BVC and WFV camera. The proposed method is able to maintain the absolute and relative internal positioning accura...