Planar block adjustment for China's land regions with LuoJia1-01 nighttime light imagery

Abstract

The Luojia1-01 satellite provides high-resolution, high-sensitivity nighttime light data at a resolution of 130 m. To effectively use the Luojia1-01 nighttime light data for global applications, the problems of relative and absolute positioning accuracy should be solved. This paper proposes a high accuracy regional geometric processing method of nighttime light imagery. We utilized a nighttime light image matching algorithm to obtain tie points, which are used in the planar block adjustment with ground control points. Then, orthorectification of all images is implemented. Finally, we obtain the nighttime light map of China by mosaicking all the nighttime light orthoimages. According to the experimental results for 275 Luojia1-01 images, the root mean square error of the tie points is 0.983 pixels and the root mean square error of independent checkpoints is 195.491 m (less than 1.5 pixels) after the planar block adjustment. The experimental results prove the validity and feasibility of the proposed method.