Title :
Titan, fractals, and filtering of Cassini altimeter data
Author :
Franceschetti, Giorgio ; Callahan, Philip S. ; Iodice, Antonio ; Riccio, Daniele ; Wall, STEPHEN D.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electron. & Telecommun. Eng., Univ. of Naples "Federico II"
Abstract :
Fractal behavior of one Titan profile acquired by the Cassini altimeter during its first flyby is demonstrated and quantitatively analyzed. The inadequacy of popular nonfractal models to represent scale-dependent behavior is also discussed. Our results lead to the conjecture that a proper geometrical model of the Titan surface is provided by the fractional Brownian motion stochastic process and that the particular acquired profile has a fractal dimension of about 2.4. In addition, use of the developed statistical model allows the design of model-based filters for a significant improvement of the measurement accuracy, at the expense of the horizontal resolution
Keywords :
fractals; planetary satellites; radar altimetry; remote sensing; space vehicles; stochastic processes; Cassini altimeter; Titan surface; extraterrestrial exploration; filtering; fractal dimension; fractals; fractional Brownian motion; radar altimetry; stochastic process; Atmospheric measurements; Extraterrestrial measurements; Filtering; Filters; Fractals; Geologic measurements; Noise measurement; Solid modeling; Stochastic processes; Surface fitting; Extraterrestrial exploration; filtering; fractals; radar altimetry;
Journal_Title :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TGRS.2006.872152
