GeoEye-1: Analysis of radiometric and geometric capability

Abstract

The Geoeye-1 satellite, launched in September 2008, is able to acquire imagery in panchromatic mode, with a spatial resolution of 0.41 m at nadir, offering the most powerful way to obtain detailed imagery actually commercially available. The aim of the work is to evaluate the quality of the GeoEye-1 products through radiometric and geometric analysis; the area test is the city of Rome. Radiometric quality of the image has been evaluated estimating the level of noise and the characteristic of the Modulation Transfer Function - MTF, that gives an index about the image sharpness. The second part of the research is focused on the evaluation of the geometric capability of Geoeye-1 satellite. The image has been oriented using two different methods: the rigorous model and the Rational Polynomial Function (RPFs) model with the Rational Polynomial Coefficients (RPCs). The results were analysed in order to compare the orientation quality obtained from different model and different software, in terms of accuracy achievable from the image. © 2010 Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.