Verification of ZY-3 Satellite Imagery Geometric Accuracy Without Ground Control Points

The Ziyuan-3 (ZY-3) satellite was designed to satisfy 1:50000 scale mapping requirements. This study uses 556 images obtained by ZY-3, from June 1 to October 31, 2013, covering an area of 3 500 000 km ² in midwestern China. A total of 900 check points measured by a global positioning system were also used to conduct the planar accuracy verification. The experimental results show that the ZY-3 nadir sensor calibration images achieved a planar root mean square error (RMSE) of 10.8 m without the use of ground control points (GCPs). In addition, the verification of vertical accuracy employed 12 ZY-3 stereo image pairs distributed over an area of 14 000 km ² around Taiyuan in the Shanxi Province of China, and a Digital Elevation Model with 0.5-m vertical accuracy was used for reference and validation. The vertical accuracy of forward interaction and stereo-extracted Digital Surface Model (DSM) from the stereo images were both validated without GCPs. The experimental results demonstrate that the overall vertical RMSE of the forward intersection was 6.58 m; it was 5.21 and 7.07 m for flat and mountainous terrain, respectively. Moreover, the overall vertical RMSE of DSM was 5.56 m; it was 4.37 and 5.69 m for flat and mountainous terrain, respectively. It can be seen from the experimental results of planar and vertical accuracy verification that ZY-3 imagery is able to satisfy the requirements of 1:50000 topographic mapping in China without using GCPs.