Fusion of Sun-Synchronous and Geostationary Images for Coastal and Ocean Color Survey Application to OLCI (Sentinel-3) and FCI (MTG)

Open ocean and coastal area monitoring requires multispectral satellite images with a middle spatial resolution (~300 m) and a high temporal repeatability (~1 h). As no current satellite sensors have such features, the aim of this study is to propose a fusion method to merge images delivered by a low earth orbit (LEO) sensor with images delivered by a geostationary earth orbit (GEO) sensor. This fusion method, called spatial spectral temporal fusion (SSTF), is applied to the future sensors- Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) (on Sentinel-3) and Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) (on Meteosat Third Generation) whose images were simulated. The OLCI bands, acquired at t
₀
, are divided by the oversampled corresponding FCI band acquired at t
₀
and multiplied by the FCI bands acquired at t
₁
. The fusion product is used for the next fusion at t
₁
and so on. The high temporal resolution of FCI allows its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to be enhanced by the means of temporal filtering. The fusion quality indicator ERGAS computed between SSTF fusion products and reference images is around 0.75, once the FCI images are filtered from the noise and 1.08 before filtering. We also compared the estimation of chlorophyll (Chl), suspended particulate matter (SPM), and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) maps from the fusion products with the input simulation maps. The comparison shows an average relative errors on Chl, SPM, and CDOM, respectively, of 64.6%, 6.2%, and 9.5% with the SSTF method. The SSTF method was also compared with an existing fusion method called the spatial and temporal adaptive reflectance fusion model (STARFM).