CE-419 : Principles of Remote

Sensing

Lecture –14: Remote Sensors – An overview and sources of

Geometric distortion

Text Books:1) George Joseph, Fundamentals of Remote Sensing

2) Richards and Jia, Remote sensing Digital image analysis, Springer

Subashisa Dutta
Department of Civil Engineering
IIT Guwahati 1
 CONCEPT OF RESOLUTION
Quality of information derived from RS images strongly
influenced by spatial, spectral, radiometric and temporal
resolution of the sensor
• Spatial Resolution
instrument resolving power needed to spatially discriminate
the smallest object
• Spectral resolution
encompasses the width of bands used from the wavelengths
of the EM spectrum.
• Radiometric resolution
quantify No. of discernible signal levels in a band, {sensor’s
ability to discriminate radiance differences (NE)}
• Temporal resolution
time interval between imaging collections over the same
geographic location
 Spatial Resolution
• Airy Pattern in an imaging system due to diffraction

• Airy disc : the Central disc, about 84% of total energy

• The diameter of the first minima is 2.44 (λ/D) f

• Where λ is the wave length of observation, D,
the diameter of the aperture of lens, f is the focal length.

• IRS PAN Sensor : D = 22 cm, for 0.5 µm wavelength, Altitude = 810

km
• The spatial resolution limit = 2 m

• Same optics for imaging for SWIR, The spatial resolution limit = 8m.

• Contrast ratio,
• Contrast modulation
• Modulation Transfer Function
• Concept of Pure and Boundary pixels

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 Spectral Resolution

Three aspects
location of the central wavelength
the bandwidth
The total number of bands
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Hyper-Spectral Imaging
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 Current observational capabilities of Electro optical imaging
instruments from Indian satellite platforms
Electro-optical Spatial Swath Number of Number of No. of days Minimum interval
Imaging foot-print (Kilometers) spectral instruments required for required for revisiting
Instrument (Meters) channels global coverage a target (days)

PAN 1 14. 5 1 1 1200 1 to 200

PAN 5.8 74 1 2 48 5

Liss3 23.5 148 3 2 24 24

Liss2 36 140 4 1 22 22

Liss3(SWIR) 70 148 1 2 24 24

Liss1 72 140 4 1 22 22

WiFS 188 810 2 3 5 2

WiFS(swir) 188 810 1 1 5 5

OCM 360 1420 8 1 2 2

Continuous daytime
A region of 300km*6000 km
CCD P/l 1000 300 3 2 monitoring of earth
can be covered every minute
disc
A region of 12000km*8000
Continuous monitoring
VHRR 2000 Earth Disc 1 2 of earth disc
km can be covered every 7
minutes
A region of 12000km*8000
Continuous monitoring
VHRR 8000 Earth Disc 2 2 of earth disc
km can be covered every 7
minutes
Engineering Design of the Sensors

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 Sources of Geometric Distortion
A number of factors
1) Rotation of the earth during image acquisition
2) Panoramic effects related to the imaging geometry
3) The curvature of the earth
4) Variations in platform altitude, attitude and velocity
5) The scan rate of some sensors
6) Sensor non-idealities
1) Earth Rotation Effects

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 Panoramic Distortion

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S-bend Distortion
Effect of Earth Curvature
Satellite

θ
h

Pc

Rc

Earth
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