Image registration is important in geostationary weather satellites. Achieving consistent registration of the images with respect to the geographical locations on the Earth is here of interest. The consistency in the registration between the images is affected whenever the orbital inclination and eccentricity are not zero. The imaging payload has a two-axis scanning mirror to capture the Earth image. The above orbital effects together with scan mirror pointing direction are the factors that cause the misregistration. This paper presents an onboard algorithm that provides the scan compensation angles due to the above factors and achieves consistent registration. The compensation varies every second, which is the time taken for each scan. Hence it is preferred to have computations onboard than to have ground based bulk uplinks for the scan compensation. The paper presents an algorithm that is useful, say, when (i) the onboard computing capabilities are limited, (ii) the navigation accuracies are coarse and (iii) the image resampling is not preferred on the ground and the payload data are directly used for weather applications. The paper also discusses the tests that were carried on the onboard software in order to validate its performance in achieving the consistent registration before launch. This is done by using another independent software tool which is also described in detail. Image motion algorithm was invoked for a couple of days in INSAT 3DR. The atmospheric wind vector deduced directly from the satellite images is given at the end.
Predictive filtering in motion compensation with steerable cardiac catheters
