Detection and Estimation of Along-Track Attitude Jitter From Ziyuan-3 Three-Line-Array Images Based on Back-Projection Residuals

High-resolution satellite images (HRSIs) obtained from linear array charge-coupled device sensors always suffer from geometric instability in the presence of attitude jitter. Therefore, detection and compensation of spacecraft attitude jitter in both the cross-track and along-track directions are crucial to improve the geometric accuracy of HRSIs. A number of reports have been made on the detection and estimation of cross-track attitude jitter. However, the detection of the attitude jitter in the along-track direction is more complicated due to the impact of topographic change. This paper presents a novel approach to achieve accurate estimation of the along-track attitude jitter by eliminating the influence of topographic information based on the back-projection residuals of three-line-array (TLA) images. The principle of detection and estimation of along-track attitude jitter is described, and the proposed approach consists of three main components as follows: 1) dense image matching of the TLA images using a comprehensive matching strategy; 2) detection of the back-projection residuals in the line direction caused by attitude jitter; and 3) estimation of the along-track attitude jitter from the back-projection residuals using a genetic algorithm. Experiments were conducted using China's Ziyuan-3 (ZY-3) TLA images, and the experimental results reveal that the frequency of the attitude jitter in the along-track direction ranges between 0.6 and 0.7 Hz, which is consistent with the frequency in the cross-track direction observed in our previous study. In addition, a comparison of the results of the proposed approach with those from direct attitude observations shows good consistency, with as little as 0.1-pixel disparity, which demonstrates the feasibility and reliability of the proposed approach. Furthermore, the geometric accuracy is further improved from a pixel level to a subpixel level and the periodic trend is removed with the compensation of the estimated attitude jitter in addition to the conventional affine compensation, which validates the potential of the proposed approach for geometric accuracy improvement with ZY-3 TLA images.