Bias Compensation Model for Sensor Orientation Under Weak Conditions

The high-precision geometric positioning of satellite images is the basis for the geometric processing of remote-sensing images and acquisition of various geospatial information. It is an important premise for the wide application of high-resolution remote-sensing satellite images. To correct systematic biases in rational function models (RFMs), many compensation methods for system errors inherent of RFMs have been proposed. Thus far, the bias compensation model (BCM) is the most widely accepted method under rigorous conditions, namely narrow camera field, small off-nadir angle, and small attitude error. However, research studies on the compensation effect of the BCM under weak conditions (wide camera field, large off-nadir angle, or large attitude error) are still lacking, and some researchers commented that the BCM is inapplicable under weak conditions in the absence of experiments. This letter analyzes the effect of position and attitude errors on orientation accuracy in the image space. An experiment was conducted using data from the Gaofen-1 (GF-1) wide-field-view-4 (WFV-4) sensor to compare the proposed analysis with the traditional analysis, and the results obtained using the BCM under weak conditions were found to be consistent with our analysis rather than the traditional analysis. This confirms that the BCM can also be used under weak conditions.