Atmospheric Refraction Calibration of Geometric Positioning for Optical Remote Sensing Satellite

Owing to the effects of atmospheric refraction, the path of light propagation is bent, making the three-point collinear principle inapplicable and influencing the geometric accuracy of high-resolution optical satellite geometric positioning. This letter presents a novel geometric positioning method with atmospheric refraction calibration for optical remote sensing satellites. The atmospheric ellipsoid model is established using the measured atmospheric parameters and accurately describes the shape and characteristics of the real atmosphere. With iterative processing of geometric positioning and atmospheric refraction calibration, the path of light propagation in atmospheric ellipsoids is calibrated, and the real coordinates of the ground object are positioned accurately. With the advantages of simplicity and independence of sensors, the rational function model with atmospheric refraction calibration is proposed to achieve geometric positioning with higher geometric accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model can calibrate atmospheric refraction error and improve the geometric accuracy of the optical imagery with a large view angle. Furthermore, compared with the refraction index using the measurement data, it is proven that atmospheric refraction calibration should be implemented according to the measured atmospheric parameters during imaging instead of using the empirical model.