Estimating Speed and Direction of Small Dynamic Targets through Optical Satellite Imaging

Moving Target Indicators (MTI) are systems used to distinguish movement from stationary scenes and sometimes to derive the spatial attributes of these objects. These systems are currently used in many sectors such as traffic studies, border surveillance, and military applications. The proposed MTI reveals vehicles and their velocities using commercial imagery from a passive optical satellite-mounted sensor. With simple process of image differencing, the MTI can automatically recognize conveyances in motion (speed and direction) represented by polygons formed by a group of pixels from successive images. Micro-change detection with an existing commercial satellite requires special considerations of differences in spatial and spectral resolution between images. Complications involving the movement detection system such as vehicle overlap, vehicle clusters, and zones of low confidence are refined by adding error-reducing modules. This process is tested on a variety of vehicles, their concentrations, and environments, confirming the feasibility of utilizing an MTI with commercial optical satellite imagery for movement recognition and velocity estimation.