Automatic Data Registration of Geostationary Payloads for Meteorological Applications at ISRO

TL;DR

This paper presents an algorithm for automatic multitemporal and multiband data registration of geostationary meteorological satellites, improving data processing for weather prediction at ISRO.

Contribution

It introduces an operational software implementation for satellite data registration, including automatic ground control point identification and transformation, tailored for Indian meteorological satellites.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated on real datasets from KALPANA-1 and INSAT-3A.

Enhanced registration accuracy despite cloud cover and distortions.

Facilitated the development of continuous weather forecasting satellites.

Abstract

The launch of KALPANA-1 satellite in the year 2002 heralded the establishment of an indigenous operational payload for meteorological predictions. This was further enhanced in the year 2003 with the launching of INSAT-3A satellite. The software for generating products from the data of these two satellites was taken up subsequently in the year 2004 and the same was installed at the Indian Meteorological Department, New Delhi in January 2006. Registration has been one of the most fundamental operations to generate almost all the data products from the remotely sensed data. Registration is a challenging task due to inevitable radiometric and geometric distortions during the acquisition process. Besides the presence of clouds makes the problem more complicated. In this paper, we present an algorithm for multitemporal and multiband registration. In addition, India facing reference boundaries for the CCD data of INSAT-3A have also been generated. The complete implementation is made up of the following steps: 1) automatic identification of the ground control points (GCPs) in the sensed data, 2) finding the optimal transformation model based on the match-points, and 3) resampling the transformed imagery to the reference coordinates. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated using the real datasets from KALPANA-1 and INSAT-3A. Both KALAPANA-1 and INSAT-3A have recently been decommissioned due to lack of fuel, however, the experience gained from them have given rise to a series of meteorological satellites and associated software; like INSAT-3D series which give continuous weather forecasting for the country. This paper is not so much focused on the theory (widely available in the literature) but concentrates on the implementation of operational software.