Resolving Power and Linear Resolution for Quality Assessment and Design of Aerospace Earth Remote Sensing Systems

The article examines the concepts of resolving power and spatial resolution (linear, limiting, diffraction) in analog (photographic) and digital (optoelectronic) aerospace ERS systems. It was found that the foreign criterion for assessing the limiting geometric resolution of the remote sensing system of remote sensing on the terrain, the GSD criterion, is inadequate for assessing the linear spatial resolution. Its use in the design of the remote sensing system impedes the matching of the lens and the digital detector according to the Nyquist criterion. This leads to information and financial losses. It is shown that the GSD criterion characterizes the minimum size of an object perceived by the remote sensing system on the earth’s surface, and not the minimum distance between two separately observed (resolvable) objects, that is, the concept of “limiting resolution” is closer to the concept of “sharpness” of the image, and not to the concepts of “resolution” and “spatial resolution”, and therefore cannot be used to assess the spatial resolution and design of the remote sensing system. It was found that to assess the quality and design of ERS systems, it is necessary to use the Russian criterion for assessing the instrumental linear spatial resolution of ERS systems on the terrain, the RSS criterion, which gives a real assessment of the spatial resolution, allows the projected ERS systems to be matched according to the Nyquist criterion with a design excellence factor equal to one (K = 1), and provides the ability to achieve the diffraction limit of the linear spatial resolution of the ERS systems on the terrain. In order to avoid further erroneous use of the foreign GSD criterion in the Russian Federation, it is proposed to standardize the domestic RSS criterion with the Russian GOST and use it to assess the quality and design of remote sensing systems.