Correction of ZY-3 image distortion caused by satellite jitter via virtual steady reimaging using attitude data

Abstract ZiYuan-3 (ZY-3), the first Chinese civilian stereo mapping satellite, suffers from 0.67 Hz satellite jitter that deteriorates its geometric performance in mapping, resource monitoring and other applications. This paper proposes a distortion correction method based on virtual steady reimaging (VSRI) using attitude data to eliminate the negative influence caused by satellite jitter in satellite data preprocessing. VSRI helps linear array pushbroom cameras rescan the ground with a uniform integral time and smooth attitude. In this method, a VSRI model is proposed, and the geometric relationship between the original and corrected image is determined in terms of geolocation consistency based on a rigorous geometric model. Thus, the corrected image is obtained by resampling from the original one. Three areas of ZY-3 three-line images suffering from satellite jitter were used to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. First, different attitude interpolation methods were compared. It is found that the Lagrange polynomial model and the cubic piecewise polynomial model have higher interpolation accuracy for original imagery. Then, the replacement accuracy of the rational function model (RFM) for ZY-3 was analyzed with 0.67 Hz satellite jitter. The results indicate that attitude oscillation reduces the fitting precision of the RFM for the rigorous imaging model. Finally, the relative orientation accuracy of the three-line images and the geo-positioning accuracy with ground control points (GCPs) before and after distortion correction were compared. The results show that the distortion caused by satellite jitter is corrected efficiently, and the accuracy of the three experimental datasets is improved in both the image space and the ground space.