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Navigation in Featureless Environments Using Enhanced Phase Correlation
Dissertation   Open access

Navigation in Featureless Environments Using Enhanced Phase Correlation

Joshua K Lentz
University of West Florida Libraries
Doctor of Philosophy (PHD), University of West Florida
2025

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Abstract

Navigation in GPS-denied environments is an area of interest for a variety of communities, to include industrial, public works, public safety, maritime and defense. Visual-aided navigation methods present an excellent solution to alternative navigation, but are challenged where features are unavailable. The failure mode in this case is generally because of Fourier Transform artifacts that dominate the phase correlation output and make the true signal difficult to identify. Literature includes mathematical descriptions of phase correlation that do not predict this artifact and modifying the expressions for phase correlation to capture it is where this research begins. Motivated by the goal of adapting phase correlation for navigation in featureless environments, the improved mathematical descriptions of phase correlation are leveraged to identify avenues for enhancements. Simple image pre-processing steps are selected, and it is demonstrated through analysis of a large dataset that the pre-processing step significantly enhances phase correlation performance for sky imagery, a category of featureless imagery. Through this analysis, an estimate is created of the maximum image shift that can be tolerated before phase correlation performance becomes unreliable. Utilizing the theoretical results, as verified by data, an experimental demonstration is performed to show the viability of phase correlation for image registration used in a navigation application. Results indicate that at the unrefined level of experimentation performed, phase correlation has potential to perform well under these conditions. However, much work is needed to refine the technique and significant discussions are included that identify suggested enhancement studies.
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