PCI Geomatics Enterprises Inc.

Published purpose

Title: Development and Demonstration of Capability to re-Project and Merge Optical Data to Fully Calibrated Slant Range SAR. Application specialists who wish to combine radar and optical data face the dilemma of deciding how to co-register their data prior to merging or integration. The traditional approach to merging radar data with optical data is to convert the radar data to a nominal projection, followed by a second correction for topographic effects. This approach has a number of disadvantages. The main drawback is caused by the modification of the original data due to resampling and re-projection. In this proposal, we propose a methodology by which SAR data can be calibrated for slope effects, followed by a mapping of the optical data into the geometry of the SAR data. This procedure enables the combination of optical data with unaltered SAR data, in the belief that merging optical data with radiometrically scaled and phase preserved SAR data will significantly improve classification results.