Geometric Calibration of the Photogrammetric Airborne Sensor ADS40 Using a Test Field

The geometric calibration of the photogrammetric airborne sensor is an important part in photogrammetry. In order to validate and improve the geometric accuracy of ADS40 which is a kind of three-tine-scanner photogrammetric airborne sensor, a geometric calibration method is developed in this paper using a test field. According to ADS40, schemes and theories of the geometric calibration method are introduced, a calibration model which is based on self-calibration bundle adjustment is proposed. The effects of factors, such as flight strip arrangement, amount of ground control point, and additional parameters of the calibration model and so on, influencing the accuracy of ADS40 are analyzed through experiments. Consequently, experimental results showed that the self-calibration model can highly improve the geometric accuracy of ADS40. Moreover, a GCPs-based method is proposed in this paper to correct the interior parameters and the CCD cell coordinates in the focal plate of the ADS40, and is proved feasible through experiments.