The summary on atmospheric disturbance problems in the motion imaging of high resolution earth observation system

High resolution earth observation system is a strategic high technology which uses aircrafts, such as planes and satellites, as observation platform to acquire the large scale, high precision and multi-layer spatial information with the employment of moving imaging loads. When an aircraft is flying, in addition to vibration caused by its own vibration source, it also encounters all sorts of atmospheric disturbances. The most typical disturbances are low-altitude wind shear and atmospheric turbulence. Low-altitude wind shear has serious impacts on take-off and approach landing of the aircraft. High resolution earth observation system usually works when the aircraft cruise, so we focus on the atmospheric turbulence. Atmospheric turbulence is continuous random fluctuation superimposed on the steady wind in the atmospheric environment. Aircraft flying in turbulent flow field will be bumping. Thus, the actual trajectory of the aircraft must depart from the ideal uniform linear motion state. From the perspective of imaging principle, the image quality of all the observation loads will be seriously degenerated by the motion of the flight platform at non-ideal conditions. This paper studies motion image quality (resolution, precision and signal-to-noise ratio) affected by atmospheric disturbance, summarizes and evaluates various existing methods generating atmospheric turbulence.