Earth observation using low cost micro/minisatellites

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) at the University of Surrey (UK) has pioneered cost-effective satellite engineering techniques for smaller, faster, cheaper satellites to provide affordable access to space. SSTL has designed, built, launched and operated a series of twelve 50kg microsatellites in low Earth orbit which carry a wide range of satellite communications, space science, remote sensing and in-orbit technology demonstration payloads — for both civil and military applications. Each of these has been built and launched for around US$3M. This paper reviews SSTL's remote sensing capabilities and presents image results from the microsatellite cameras in low Earth in orbit. The latest microsatellites (TMSAT & FASat-Bravo) under construction at SSTL and due for launch in mid-1997 will provide 3-band multispectral imaging with 80-metre resolution; autonomous on-board image analysis, processing and compression prior to transmission direct to ground-based users employing small portable terminals.     

资源三号卫星廊坊地区遥感数据的融合处理

本文以资源三号卫星河北省廊坊地区2A级全色遥感影像和多光谱影像数据为基础,采用遥感数字图像处理软件ERDASIMAGINE进行了研究区域的提取,并对提取的感兴趣区进行了几何校正,即图像配准处理,然后进行了融合处理,分别采用了空间增强的分辨率融合算法、改进IHS分辨率融合算法以及小波分辨率融合算法,通过和融合前的影像进行对比,融合后的影像既保留了多光谱影像的丰富的波谱信息,同时具有了全色影像的高空间分辨率的特征,最后对比三种融合算法,得出改进的IHS分辨率融合算法效果最佳。     

基于小波和支持向量回归的高光谱遥感图像压缩

高光谱遥感成像技术能够获取探测对象丰富的空间信息和光谱信息,但所得图像海量数据的存储与传输制约了其应用。为此,提出了一种基于三维整数小波变换和小波支持向量回归的高光谱遥感图像压缩方法。首先采用三维整数小波变换把高光谱遥感图像分解成不同尺度的多个子带。然后对低频子带直接进行DPCM编码,而对高频子带则利用小波支持向量回归学习其小波系数之间的相关性,并采用小部分训练样本即支持向量来稀疏表示小波系数,以此达到压缩高频小波系数的目的。最后对支持向量及其相应的权重进行熵编码。文中给出了实验结果,并与基于3D SPIHT和JPEG2000的高光谱遥感图像压缩方法进行了比较,结果表明：所提出的方法在相同比特率下能够获得更高的峰值信噪比。     

基于直方图修改的卫星遥感图像无损隐藏传输

针对星上低速率数据的传输问题,提出了一种基于直方图修改技术的卫星遥感图像无损隐藏传输方法。该方法通过对星上高速率遥感图像相邻像素差的直方图进行修改,将低速率数据嵌入到原始高速率遥感载体图像中,并利用卫星高速数传系统进行下传。地面接收端可以从载体图像中正确提取低速率数据,并无损恢复原始高速率遥感图像数据。该方法在不增加卫星数传系统复杂度和信息传输速率的前提下,提高了卫星数传系统的利用率,增强了数据传输的隐蔽性。实验结果表明,本文算法在保证良好的不可见性的情况下,获得了较高的纯载荷嵌入容量。与其它无损嵌入方法相比,在峰值信噪比和纯载荷嵌入容量方面都有很大的优势。     

A new facility for fluid sciences: The liquid structure facility

The Liquid Structure Facility (LSF) is presently under development under ESA contract. It will be able to perform a wide range of fluid science experiments taking use of the determination of the velocity, temperature, concentration fields and the interface shape deformation. This facility will be activated by telecommands and/or manually by the crew. The key points of the LSF are the different diagnostic configuration capabilities, the modularity of the facility, and the accuracy of the control at the boundary conditions (and thus of the stimuli). The LSF is structured around four different modules:

• —the cell module which is exchangeable and is dedicated to an experiment or to a group of experiments, it allows to achieve a high accuracy level for the boundary conditions

• —the temperature control module using a liquid cooling loop which can impose a good thermal stability to the cell module

• —the diagnostic module

• —the electronic and data handling module.

The capabilities of the facility are described in terms of stimuli and diagnostic performances.     

卫星遥感数据的浏览查询技术

遥感卫星图像数据的预处理包括数据编目、存档管理、浏览查询和产品生产等部分。其中，浏览查询是向遥感数据的用户提供查询和检索卫星原始数据各级产品数据的手段，浏览查询系统的功能和性能直接影响到遥感数据的使用效率。本文介绍了新一代高码速率遥感卫星地面数据处理中浏览查询系统研制的主要技术。本文所研究的浏览查询技术已成功的运用到资源二号遥感卫星地面站的数据处理系统中。本文论述的数据处理技术将为其它遥感卫星地面数据处理系统的研制提供重要的帮助。     

基于GPU的高光谱遥感主成分分析并行优化

主成分分析（principal component analysis, PCA）是高光谱遥感图像特征提取的重要方法。为了在保证精度的同时,提高高光谱遥感PCA算法的计算效率,文章提出一种基于图形处理器（graphic processing unit,GPU）＋中央处理器（central processing unit,CPU）异构系统的PCA并行优化方法。该方法利用GPU的并行计算能力实现PCA中复杂的协方差矩阵计算与维数缩减过程,优化了像元去均值的计算流程;解决了GPU内核计算像元累加和非合并访问问题;利用共享内存机制,提高了访存效率。此外,该方法采用改进的Jacobi快速迭代法在CPU中进行特征分解,保证了算法的精度。实验结果表明,该方法在保证精度的同时能够有效提高计算效率,在Quadro600平台上的加速比达到141倍,满足了高光谱遥感图像实时应用的需求。     

Cost-driven design of small satellite remote sensing systems*

Earth remote sensing (alongside communications) is one of the key application of Earth-orbiting satellites. Civilian satellites in the LANDSAT and SPOT series provide Earth images which have been used for a vast spectrum of applications in agriculture, meteorology, hydrology, urban planning and geology, to name but a few. In the defence sector, satellite remote sensing systems are a critical tool in strategic and tactical planning – for the countries which can afford them. To date, remote sensing satellites have fallen into one of these two categories: military missions driven by the requirement for very high resolution and orbital agility; and multipurpose civil satellites using general purpose sensors to serve a diverse community of end users. For military-style missions, the drive to high resolution sets the requirements for optics, attitude control and downlink data bandwidth. For civil missions, the requirement to satisfy multiple, diverse user applications forces compromises on spectral band and orbit selection. Although there are exceptions, many small satellite remote sensing missions carry on in this tradition, concentrating on ultra high resolution products for multiple user communities. This results in satellites costing on the order of US $100 M, not optimised for any particular application. This paper explores an alternative path to satellite remote sensing, aiming simultaneously to reduce cost and to optimise imaging products for specific applications. By decreasing the cost of the remote sensing satellite system to a critical point, it becomes appropriate to optimise the sensor's spectral and temporal characteristics to fit the requirements of a small, specialised user base. The critical engineering trade-off faced in a cost driven mission is how to reduce mission cost while still delivering a useful product to the selected user. At the Surrey Space Centre, we have pursued an engineering path using two dimensional CCD array sensors, commercial off-the-shelf lenses and gravity-gradient stabilised microsatellites. In spite of the inherent limitations of such systems, recent successes with the Thai Microsatellite Company's Thai-Phutt satellite show that a system costing in the region of US $3 million, can approach the spectral and spatial characteristics of LANDSAT. Surrey's UoSAT-12 minisatellite (to be launched April, 1999) will further develop this cost-driven approach to provide 10 m panchromatic resolution and 30 m multi-spectral resolution. This paper describes the Thai-Phutt and UoSAT-12 imaging systems, explaining the engineering methods and trade-offs. Although Surrey is presently the only centre presently pursuing such implementations, our paper shows that they deserve wider consideration.     

Future earth observation missions for oceanographic applications: Indian perspectives

Significant progress has been achieved in India in demonstrating the utility of remote sensing data for various oceanographic applications during the last one decade. Among these, techniques have been developed for retrieval of ocean surface waves, winds, wave forecast model, internal waves, sea surface temperature and chlorophyll pigments. Encouraged from these results as well as for meeting the specific and increasing data requirements on an assured basis by oceanographers, India is making concerted efforts for developing and launching state-of-the-art indigenous satellites for ocean applications in the coming years.

The first in the series of ocean satellites planned for launch is Oceansat-1 (IRS-P4) by early 1999. Oceansat-1 carries on-board an Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a Multi-frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer (MSMR). OCM will have 8 narrow spectral bands operating in visible and near- infrared bands (402–885 nm) with a spatial resolution of 360 m and swath of 1420 km. The MSMR with its all weather capability is configured to have measurements at 4 frequencies viz., 6.6, 10.65, 18 & 21 GHz in dual polarisation mode with a spatial resolution of 120, 80, 40 & 40 km, respectively with an overall swath of 1360 km. The Oceansat-1 with repetitivity of once in two days will provide global data for retrieval of various oceanographic and meteorological parameters such as chlorophyll (primary productivity), sea surface temperature and wind speed, besides a host of other parameters of relevance to meteorology.

A full fledged satellite for ocean applications known as Oceansat-2 (IRS-P7) is also planned for launch during 2002. This satellite with payload mix of microwave (Scatterometer, Altimeter & Passive Microwave Radiometer), Thermal (TIR) and Optical (OCM) sensors, will provide greater in-sight into the global understanding of ocean dynamics/resources. This mission is expected to provide a complete set of oceanographic measurements, which are useful for providing operational oceanographic services.

Efforts are also on towards development of missions having multi-frequency, multipolarisation and multi-look angle microwave payloads including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and advanced millimeter wave sounders, besides development of imaging spectrometers by 2005.

A well-knit plan has been initiated in India for utilisation of planned Oceansat data. Important efforts initiated in this direction include SATellite Coastal and Oceanographic Research and Ocean Information Services, which are being carried out on an integrated basis aiming at providing services to the down stream users. The paper highlights these efforts in India towards providing an operational ocean information services in the coming years.     

Potential evolution of an international moon base programme

The Moon is a major target in expanding human activity in Space. President Bush has called for a Space Exploration Initiative. European participation may depend on achieving an affordable programme and identifying distinct elements for non-U.S. participation. Affordability requires that all participants can influence the “cost to user” of Base operations. If lunar activity is to evolve towards resource exploitation, there will need to be a progressive reduction in operating costs. European interest would prefer participation that allowed longer-term independent interests. The paper addresses how non-U.S. agencies could contribute valuable elements to an International Moon Base while meeting three criteria:

• — Keep a core infrastructure under U.S. control.

• — Avoid a total reliance by the partner on U.S. services.

• — Allow the partner to evolve towards an eventual, semi-autonomous or autonomous capability.

The paper illustrates possible implications of meeting these constraints through “mini infrastructures” combining several elements to form a working architecture. It is concluded that any European participation in an International Moon Base Programme should contain both Space transport and surface elements.     

Why rover preparatory programmes? The example of the French programme “VAP”

The very first activities concerning planetary rovers began in 1964 in the Soviet Union and in the United States for lunar missions. Nowadays, with the increase of new mission needs and technical possibilities, several space agencies have engaged in some preliminary programmes in that area with the following objectives:

• —to prepare their involvement in future international rover missions

• —to ease contacts/discussions between scientists and engineers

• —to study and develop a new generation of in situ experiments

• —to perform system/mission analysis in conjunction with the definition of the mission objectives

• —to analyze robotic problematics and implement robotic concepts in the rover architectures.

To perform these activities, several organizations have been set up in Russia, the United States, Japan, Italy and France, according to the relative weight of space engineering over robotic research.

In the case of the French programme (‘VAP—Automatic Planetary Rover’), the organization is based on a partnership between the CNES, a scientific committee, four national research laboratories and industries in order to optimize scientific and technical work, with an optimal use of past robotic research studies, as well as to generate spin-offs for Earth applications. Indeed, as a preliminary result, we now have a co-operative agreement with Russia to procure cameras and associated software for the autonomous navigation of the Marsokhod 96 and 2 projects for terrestrial applications of robotic concepts defined within the framework of the VAP programme.     

基于深度卷积神经网络的遥感影像目标检测

随着遥感影像数据规模的快速扩张,如何高效准确地识别遥感影像中的典型目标成为当前的研究热点。为解决传统遥感影像目标检测方法准确率低的问题,用基于深度卷积神经网络进行遥感影像目标检测,在遥感影像数据集上用基于Faster-RCNN的神经网络模型对VGG16卷积网络进行训练,对输入的遥感影像通过区域推荐网络标注出待检目标的包围框和置信度,实现对遥感影像的目标检测。以飞机和油罐为例,在TensorFlow深度学习框架下实现了数据预处理、网络训练、目标检测等功能,并在当前测试数据集上取得了较高的检测准确率和置信度。该研究成果可应用于遥感影像解译和处理等相关领域。     

关于遥感图像品质的若干问题

遥感图像是遥感数据获取系统的输出,遥感图像的品质表现为遥感图像在完成遥感任务中的应用价值。文章对遥感图像品质的概念和表征予以介绍,对遥感图像品质的影响因素和提高遥感图像品质的有关问题,包括遥感数据获取系统的性能、成像条件和运行状态等加以说明,对如何提高遥感图像品质提出了若干建议。     

星上遥感影像在轨处理进展研究

从星地数传、高时敏任务等对星上遥感影像在轨处理的需求出发,本文对美国、欧洲以及国内主要的星上遥感影像在轨处理进展进行了研究;以此为基础,结合星上遥感影像在轨处理框架与深度学习等智能处理技术,分析了高性能星上智能处理平台构建、基于深度学习的遥感影像在轨智能处理、多源遥感影像数据在轨融合处理、星地协同数据处理及在轨更新等星上遥感影像在轨处理关键技术;最后,对星上遥感影像在轨处理未来发展趋势进行了总结,为进一步提升遥感卫星在轨应用效能提供参考。     

卫星光学遥感系统优化设计与像质评价探讨

介绍了卫星光学遥图像获取与图像处理一体化优化设计的思路;运用通用像质方程(GIQE)对于利用小相对孔径光学系统和调制传递函数补偿(MTFC)方法得到的图像的品质与利用相对较大相对孔径光学系统得到的图像的品质进行了对比分析。     

卫星光学遥感系统优化设计与像质评价探讨

介绍了卫星光学遥图像获取与图像处理一体化优化设计的思路；运用通用像质方程（GIQE）对于利用小相对孔径光学系统和调制传递函数补偿（MTFC）方法得到的图像的品质与利用相对较大相对孔径光学系统得到的图像的品质进行了对比分析。     

改进暗通道遥感影像去雾方法及效果分析

遥感影像的预处理工作是遥感数据应用的基础。去除云雾是影像预处理工作的重要组成部分。针对遥感影像雾霾浓度分布不均匀的问题,提出一种改进的暗通道遥感影像去雾方法。以"高分一号"(GF-1)卫星为例,根据影像灰度图中的灰度值对影像雾霾浓度区域进行划分,对每个区域中暗原色值的获取方式进行改进,使用导向滤波优化大气传输率,以归一化植被指数(NDVI)为基础,设计用于评价影像去雾质量的定量指标。结果表明:所提出的方法能明显去除雾霾干扰,有效改善卫星影像数据的视觉效果,增强影像细节。该方法去雾处理后的遥感数据能应用于定量遥感,提高遥感影像的可用性及有效性。     

景物和成像条件对遥感图像品质的影响

遥感图像是遥感数据获取系统的输出,遥感图像的品质表现为遥感图像在完成遥感任务中的应用价值。遥感图像品质由成像链的状态和性能决定。成像链包含景物、成像条件和成像系统的所有组成部分。文章介绍光学遥感情况下,景物和成像条件对遥感图像品质的影响,包括景物特性和成像条件的表征,及其对遥感图像品质影响的分析。同时,指出了针对景物和成像条件,在成像系统设计和运行等方面需注意的问题。     

单帧数字图像分辨率改善的频域正则化方法

现有多帧序列频域分辨率改善方法主要基于柯西-高斯先验模型，对单帧图像处理效果不理想。在分析频谱混叠公式的基础上，研究了单帧图像分辨率改善的频域方法。提出了基于柯西-高斯先验模型的正则化方法，由于柯西-高斯先验模型具有较好的信号稀疏表示能力，因此能有效地改善图像的分辨率。设计了迭代求解算法，给出了迭代初值的稳健算法，并将二维计算问题转化为一维计算问题，实现了方法的快速计算，同时大大地减少了存储量。文中给出了一维信号和遥感图像两个算例，计算结果表明，方法可以有效地改善图像的分辨率。