Analysis of the Factors Affecting Airborne Digital Sensor Image Quality

Over the past decade, airborne digital sensor series linear array scanners, among the most important imaging sensors in photogrammetry practices, have been used around the world to measure and interpret the terrain. They have attracted much interest from researchers in image quality and data processing and application. This paper analyzes the factors affecting the quality of airborne digital sensor images and proposes suggestions for data acquisition and flight plan design. Factors affecting image geometric quality are first analyzed theoretically, including the velocity and attitude variations of aircraft, and terrain elevation changes and slope, and formulas are given to express the quantitative relationship. Then, a real data set is used to verify the theoretical analysis and evaluate the practical influence, and according to the formulas, advice on image data acquisition control and flight plan design is provided, so as to improve image quality and facilitate subsequent works.