Improvements on the Three-Dimensional Positioning of High Resolution Stereo Satellite Imagery

The Rational Function Model has been used as a replacement sensor model in most commercial photogrammetric systems due to its capability of maintaining the accuracy of the physical sensor models. Although satellite images with rational polynomial coefficients have been used to determine three-dimensional position, it has limitations in the accuracy for large scale topographic mapping. In this study, high resolution stereo satellite images, QuickBird-2, were used to investigate how much the three-dimensional position accuracy was affected by the No. of ground control points, polynomial order, and distribution of GCPs. As the results, we can confirm that these experiments satisfy the accuracy requirements for horizontal and height position of 1:25,000 map scale.