LiDAR chip for automated geo-referencing of high-resolution satellite imagery

The accurate geo-referencing processes that apply ground control points is prerequisite for effective end use of HRSI (High-resolution satellite imagery). Since the conventional control point acquisition by human operator takes long time, demands for the automated matching to existing reference data has been increasing its popularity. Among many options of reference data, the airborne LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data shows high potential due to its high spatial resolution and vertical accuracy. Additionally, it is in the form of 3-dimensional point cloud free from the relief displacement. Recently, a new matching method between LiDAR data and HRSI was proposed that is based on the image projection of whole LiDAR data into HRSI domain, however, importing and processing the large amount of LiDAR data considered as time-consuming. Therefore, we wmotivated to ere propose a local LiDAR chip generation for the HRSI geo-referencing. In the procedure, a LiDAR point cloud was rasterized into an ortho image with the digital elevation model. After then, we selected local areas, which of containing meaningful amount of edge information to create LiDAR chips of small data size. We tested the LiDAR chips for fully-automated geo-referencing with Kompsat-2 and Kompsat-3 data. Finally, the experimental results showed one-pixel level of mean accuracy.