Simulation and Analysis of Satellite Smart Agility Imaging System

High resolution satellite imagery has been widely used in surveying, mapping, and environmental monitoring, etc. It could truly record the ground scenes and provide large amount of earth surface information. However, satellite’s orbit is always fixed and stable, and the scan direction is usually parallel to the orbit. Therefore, sometimes high resolution satellite’s images won’t cover the regions which we have interest in. In that case, we might need to mosaic several images from different orbits into a new one, and this causes lots of problems such as geometric correction and color balancing.
Smart Agility Imaging Mode (SAIM) which was proposed by NSPO can alter satellite’s attitudes dynamically during image acquisition. With this mode, satellite’s scan direction and orbit can be unparallel. In the same period of satellite’s movement, the region of image can be different. If this mode can be used wisely, satellite image’s acquisition and application should be more flexible and effective.
In this study, the characteristics and the mechanism of SAIM are firstly introduced. The orbits and possible imaging regions are simulated according to the dynamically varying attitudes of satellites. Finally, the surface images are simulated and possible errors are analyzed for further applications.