The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part Bl. Beijing 2008 
1338 
degree forward (GCD: 2.452 meter), 5 degree backward 
(GCD:2.187 meter), 0.62 base-height ratio, could greatly 
reduce the shading effect of high elevation difference 
area and the backward image is suitable to produce ortho 
image. The acquisition time difference of two cameras is 
52 seconds, the short interval of acquisition time is 
favorable for stereo observation and image matching. 
And the effective swath of CARTOSAT-1 stereo pair is 26 
kilometers due to earth rotation. The two independent 
camera system of CARTOSAT-1 could work simultaneously 
and enables the acquisition of continuous swath up to 4000 
kilometers which is only restricted by the storage and downlink 
capacity of the satellite. So, the characteristic of CARTOSAT-1 
is designed for advanced and large scale mapping 
applications. 
IKONOS, QuickBird, Orb View, CARTOSAT-1, ALOS PRISM, 
SPOT5 HRS, ASTER are main along-track stereo cartographic 
applications satellites. And the resolution of IKONOS, 
QuickBird, OrbView is from 0.6 meter to l.Ometer, the 
resolution of CARTOSAT-1 and ALOS PRISM is 2.3meter, the 
resolution of SPOT5 HRS, ASTER is 10 to 15 meter. Compared 
with popular IKONOS and SPOT5 stereo data, CARTOSAT-1 
stereo data has advantage in large-scale data acquisition and 
disadvantage in low geometric accuracy without ground control 
points and lacking multi-spectral data. And lacking 
internationally application cases of India remote sensing data 
blocks the marketing of IRS satellite data. 
There are many researches(Space Imaging 2002;, DigitalGlobe 
2006; ORBIMAGE 2004; Fraser 2001; Fraser 2003; Li 2000; 
Tao 2000; Tao 2001; Jacek 2003; Toutin 2003 ) about the 
surveying and mapping application of IKONOS, QuickBird, 
OrbView, SPOT5 HRS and ASTER, but very few about 
CARTOSAT-1. In this paper, we tested a pair of CARTOSAT- 
1 stereo pair of Beijing area and the results show that the 
planimetry and height accuracy of CARTOSAT-1 stereo pair is 
70 meter without Ground Control Points(GCPs), and could 
reach 5-meter with high-accurate GCPs which meets the 
national 1:50,000 topographic maps survey specifications 
specifications 
CARTOSAT- 
1 
IKONOS 
SPOT5 
HRS 
GSD(meter) 
2.5X2.5 
1.0X1.0 
10.0X5.0 
base-height ratio 
0.62 
0.54-0.87 
0.82 
Orbit Height(km) 
618 
680 
832 
Quantization 
10 
11 
8 
Data quality 
good 
excellent 
fair 
Multi spectral data 
No 
Yes 
No* 
Accuracy without 
ground 
control(meter) 
<80 
<20 
<50 
Accuracy with 
ground 
control(meter) 
5 
1 
10 
Orbit orient 
accuracy 
fair 
good 
good 
Data acquisition 
capability (small 
area) 
good 
good 
good 
Data acquisition 
capability (large 
area) 
good 
fair 
good 
standard scene 
(square km) 
30*30 
11*11 
120*60 
standard stereo 
pair (square km) 
About 26*26 
About 
11*11 
About 
120*60 
Continuous swath 
length(km) 
>4000 
<600 
Notes: * SPOT5 HRS is panchromatic and HRG has multi-spectral data 
which is a different system from HRS from camera specification and 
control system. 
Table 1. Comparison of along-track stereo mapping satellites 
2. CARTOSAT-1 ORIENTATION PRINCIPLE AND 
METHODS 
Like IKONOS, QuickBird and OrbView, CARTOSAT-1 
provides Rational Polynomial Coefficients(RPC) of Rational 
Function Model (RFM) for each scene, and it also provides 
rigor imaging parameters in LGSOWG format. And RFM is 
more popular in photogrametric processing. 
2.1 RFM definition 
RFM is the initial of Rational Function Model,RFM is a 
common geometric model of the satellite imaging which 
mapping 3-dimension ground point to 2-dimension image 
point.( Tao 2000; Tao 2001; OGC 1999; Hartley 1997) 
Num r (X.,Y„Z.) 
Den r (X n ,Y n ,Z„) 
Num c {X m ,Y„Z.) 
Den c (X„,Y n ,Z„) 
Where, X n , Y n and Z n are regularized 3-dimensional space 
coordinate, and P n and C n is corresponding regularized image 
coordinate: 
X. 
Y. 
z-z 0 
z s 
(2) 
(3) 
Where (X,Y,Z) , (X 0 ,Y 0 ,Z 0 ) and (X S ,7 S ,Z 5 ) 
are the 3-dimensional coordinate, offset and scaling 
coefficients independently; and (v,c) , (v ,C a ) and 
(v s ,C s ) are the 2-dimensional coordinate, offset and 
scaling coefficients independently;