Atmospheric correction and velocity aberration for physical sensor modeling of High-resolution satellite images

High-resolution earth-observing satellites acquire substantial amount of geospatial images. In addition to high image quality, high-resolution satellite images (HRSI) provide unprecedented direct georegistration accuracy, which have been enabled by accurate orbit determination technology. Direct georegistration is carried out by relating the determined position and attitude of camera to the ground target, i.e., projecting an image point to the earth ellipsoid using the collinearity equation. However, the apparent position of ground target is displaced due to the atmosphere and satellite velocity causing significant georegistration bias. In other words, optic ray from the earth surface to satellite cameras at 400-900km altitude refracts due to the thick atmosphere which is called atmospheric refraction. Velocity aberration is caused by high traveling speed of earth-observing satellites, approximately 7.7 km/s, relative to the earth surface. These effects should be compensated for accurate direct georegistration of HRSI. Therefore, this study presents the equation and the compensation procedure of atmospheric refraction and velocity aberration. Then, the effects are simulated at different image acquisition geometry to present how much bias is introduced. Finally, these effects are evaluated for Quickbird and WorldView-1 based on the physical sensor model.