The application of image processing to satellite navigation

Abstract

Given the locations of several landmarks on a satellite acquired image and their true geographic coordinates, the position and orientation of the satellite can be determined. Two methods for automatically locating the image coordinates of specified landmarks are described. The first, a particularly fast sequential similarity detection algorithm for template matching was originally described by Nagel and Rosenfeld. The second method involves iteratively resampling the picture function in the vicinity of the anticipated landmark. A variety of other speedup methods is also described. An application to SMS imagery is envisioned.