A Remote Sensing Image Registration Benchmark for Operational Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 Products

Image registration is an essential task in image processing, where the final objective is to align geometrically two or more images. In Remote Sensing this process allows to compare, fusion or analyse data. For this purpose, different methods and techniques have been proposed. In this paper a selection of image registration methods has been compared performing inter-sensor registration between Sentinel-2 (S2) and Sentinel-3 (S3) operational data. Registration between S2 and S3 data is not trivial, as there are considerable spectral-spatial differences among them. Nevertheless, the resolution difference results in S2 products being a convenient reference to improve S3 products spatially. The experimentation has been done using four sample pairs of S2 and S3 operational data and representatives of the main registration algorithms used in the last years. Performance measures and results are shown and discussed to check the accuracy and quality of the selected methods.