Automatic Fast and Robust Technique to Refine Extracted SIFT Key Points for Remote Sensing Images

The scale-invariant feature transform(SIFT)ability to automatic control points(CPs)extraction is very well known on remote sensing images,however,its result inaccurate and sometimes has incorrect matching from generating a small number of false CPs pairs,their matching has high false alarm.This paper presents a method containing a modification to improve the performance of the SIFT CPs matching by applying sum of absolute difference(SAD)in different manner for the new optical satellite generation called near-equatorial orbit satellite(NEqO)and multi-sensor images.The proposed method leads to improving CPs matching with a significantly higher rate of correct matches.The data in this study were obtained from the RazakSAT satellite covering the Kuala Lumpur-Pekan area.The proposed method consists of three parts:(1)applying the SIFT to extract CPs automatically,(2)refining CPs matching by SAD algorithm with empirical threshold,and(3)evaluating the refined CPs scenario by comparing the result of the original SIFT with that of the proposed method.The result indicates an accurate and precise performance of the model,which showed the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.

Simulate New Near Equatorial Satellite System by a Novel Multi-Fields and Purposes Remote Sensing Goniometer

Researchers in the remote sensing field use different types of images from satellite systems and simulator devices, such as goniometers. However, no device can simulate the new generation of optical satellite system called near-equatorial satellite system to perform different kinds of remote sensing applications in equatorial regions. This study proposed a newly invented laboratory and fieldwork goniometer designed to simulate and capture intensity variation and measure the bidirectional spectral reflectance of earth surface. The proposed goniometer is a multi-purpose and multi-field device. It is able to simulate different satellite systems and measure the intensity variation and spectral reflectance of earth’s surface features with freely azimuth and zenith angles of sensors and illumination source in fieldwork and/or laboratory. However, the system of invention is focusing on specific satellite orbital to work with the parameters and properties of NEqO satellite system in order to obtain NEqO system imagery for performing different applications such as geometric correction, relative radiometric normalization and change detection for future work. The significant of this invention is that most of the invented goniometers of remote sensing are able to work just in field or just in laboratory and use, carry just optical sensor or hyperspectral sensor. Specifically, our invention can do all these functions that are not available in existing goniometers. The proposed device offers several advantages, namely, high measurement speed, flexibility, low cost, efficiency, and possible measurement depending on the free zenith/azimuth angles of sensors and illumination sources. The proposed goniometer includes ten parts, and two different sensors (optical and hyperspectral).