Publications

Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Geolocation Using Fiducial Images

Doerry, Armin; Bickel, Douglas L.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) creates imagery of the earth?s surface from airborne or spaceborne radar platforms. However, the nature of any radar is to geolocate its echo data, i.e., SAR images, relative to its own measured radar location. Acceptable accuracy and precision of such geolocation can be quite di fficult to achieve, and is limite d by any number of parameters. However, databases of geolocated earth imagery do exist, often using other imaging modalities, with Google Earth being one such example. Thes e can often be much more accurate than what might be achievable by the radar itself. Cons equently, SAR images may be aligned to some higher accuracy database, there by improving the geolocation of features in the SAR image. Examples offer anecdotal evidence of the viability of such an approach. - 4 - Acknowledgements This report is the result of an unf unded Research and Development effort. A special thank you to Tommy Burks for his da ta collections in the Albuquerque area.