ASTER DEM performance

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
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Abstract

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument onboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Terra spacecraft has an along-track stereoscopic capability using its a near-infrared spectral band to acquire the stereo data. ASTER has two telescopes, one for nadir-viewing and another for backward-viewing, with a base-to-height ratio of 0.6. The spatial resolution is 15 m in the horizontal plane. Parameters such as the line-of-sight vectors and the pointing axis were adjusted during the initial operation period to generate Level-1 data products with a high-quality stereo system performance. The evaluation of the digital elevation model (DEM) data was carried out both by Japanese and U.S. science teams separately using different DEM generation software and reference databases. The vertical accuracy of the DEM data generated from the Level-1A data is 20 m with 95% confidence without ground control point (GCP) correction for individual scenes. Geolocation accuracy that is important for the DEM datasets is better than 50 m. This appears to be limited by the spacecraft position accuracy. In addition, a slight increase in accuracy is observed by using GCPs to generate the stereo data.

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title ASTER DEM performance
Series title IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
DOI 10.1109/TGRS.2005.847924
Volume 43
Issue 12
Year Published 2005
Language English
Publisher IEEE
Contributing office(s) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
Description 7 p.
First page 2707
Last page 2713
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