Abstract: The coverage evaluation of traditional land observation for optical satellite is based on ideal coverage of satellite, which has no consideration of the influence of physical condition, such as satellite storage, satellite data transmission and observation time. It also has no consideration of the influence of meteorological condition in observation area. According to land observation requirements of remote sensing, an index evaluation system of effective coverage ability for remote sensing on land observation is build up. According to data storage capacity, data transmission capacity between satellite and ground, longest observation time in one loop, solar elevation angle of satellite observation and so on, an effective coverage calculation method is proposed based on physical capacity constraint for optical remote sensing satellite. On the basis of the climate data of meteorological station over the years, an effective coverage calculation method based on climate constraint is raised for optical remote sensing satellite. Synthesizing satellite physical capacity constraint and climate constraint, effective coverage capacity of earth observation for optical remote sensing satellite is calculated. Meanwhile, based on index evaluation weight of effective coverage capacity for land observation by experts, analytical hierarchical process (AHP) is used to evaluate requirement satisfactory degree for land observation. The experimental result shows that the proposed algorithm is more accurate in estimation and evaluation for effective coverage on land observation, which is able to provide a more precise solution for effective coverage capacity evaluation on earth observation.

Key words: land observation, effective coverage, physical constraints, climate constraints, analytic hierarchy process(AHP), effective coverage capacity evaluation