Geo-location using synthetic maps

Geo-location of an overhead remote sensor field of view using synthetic Earth scenes is shown. Synthetic sensor scenes (“maps”) combine an Earth datum, digital terrain elevation data, and Landsat scenes in the viewing geometry. The collected satellite image is correlated with a corresponding map to yield pixel lat/long coordinates on the Earth. Errors are estimated based on scene structure, viewing geometry, and sensor “state of health”. Daytime visible band scenes of land-water interfaces and mountainous terrain in cloud-free 200×200 pixel scenes with point spread functions of 2 to 3 pixels have been studied initially. Geo-location to date has yielded corrections of <5 pixels to dead reckoning boresights with residual errors of 0.5 pixels. The method will be applied to a large ensemble of collections and will be extended to nighttime collects in infrared bands