Patent ID: 9030915
Filing Date: 2015-05-12
Classification: G01S

Abstract:
1. A computer-based method for locating geographic areas where spatial overlap of swath sensor data meets a pre-selected amount of swath width comprising the steps of: (a) automatically reducing scan lines by removing turn data and roll excursion data from the sensor data; (b) automatically identifying a contiguous series of the reduced scan lines having less than a pre-selected amount of yaw and roll; (c) automatically computing edge point positions for each of the reduced scan lines to create original polygons for each of the contiguous series of the reduced scan lines, the original polygons having a series of edge points along opposite edges of the original polygon; (d) automatically computing overlap polygons by ANDing two of the original polygons, the overlap polygons including overlap polygon edge points from a subset of the edge points of the two original polygons; (e) automatically computing first projection distances from each of the overlap polygon edge points along a perpendicular to the lines defining each edge of a first of the two polygons to the edge points of the first of the two polygons; (f) automatically computing a first overlap percentage based on the maximum of the first projection distances and the length of the line connecting the opposite edges of the first of the two polygons; (g) automatically computing second projection distances from each of the overlap polygon edge points along a perpendicular to the lines defining each edge of a second of the two polygons to the edge points of the second of the two polygons; (h) automatically computing a second overlap percentage based on the maximum of the second projection distance and the length of the line connecting the opposite edges of the second of the two polygons; (i) automatically choosing a maximum overlap percentage from the first overlap percentage and the second overlap percentage; and (j) automatically locating the geographic areas based on the maximum overlap percentage and the pre-selected amount of swath width.