Geometric quality assessment of CBERS-4 MUXCAM image

Abstract

In December 2014, Brazil and China successfully launched the CBERS-4 satellite, the fourth generation of CBERS satellites. In the payload module, the satellite carries the MUXCAM, a 20 m/pixel spatial resolution multispectral camera. The MUXCAM was built by Brazil and it is an improvement of the CCD camera on board CBERS-1, 2 and 2B satellites. In this paper the geometric quality of the MUXCAM images is analyzed. One can measure the geometric quality of the CCD sensor by calculating the positioning and the internal accuracy of the images acquired by it. The positional accuracy for the MUXCAM resulted in ~404 m whereas the internal accuracy resulted in ~30 m, better than 2 pixels. Therefore, in less rigorous applications in which a high accuracy in coordinates is not mandatory, and in which such errors can be neglected, the multispectral images acquired by MUXCAM can be used without a prior geometric correction.