RNCC-based fine co-registration of multi-temporal RapidEye satellite

The aim of this study is to propose a fine co-registration approach for multi-temporal satellite images acquired from RapidEye, which has an advantage of availability for time-series analysis. To this end, we generate multi temporal ortho-rectified images using RPCs (Rational Polynomial Coefficients) provided with Rapid Eye images and then perform fine co-registration between the ortho-rectified images. A DEM (Digital Elevation Model) extracted from the digital map was used to generate the ortho-rectified images, and the RNCC (Registration Noise Cross Correlation) was applied to conduct the fine co-registration. Experiments were carried out using 4 Rapid Eye 1B images obtained from May 2015 to November 2016 over the Yeonggwang area. All 5 bands (blue, green, red, red edge, and near-infrared) that Rapid Eye provided were used to carry out the fine co-registration to show their possibility of being applicable for the co-registration. Experimental results showed that all the bands of RapidEye images could be co-registered with each other and the geometric alignment between images was qualitatively/quantitatively improved. Especially, it was confirmed that stable registration results were obtained by using the red and red edge bands, irrespective of the seasonal differences in the image acquisition.