A Geographic Consistency-Constrained Cross-Modal Super-Resolution Matching Method for UAV Geo-Localization

Visual geo-localization is a predominant approach for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied environments, typically achieved by matching UAV-captured visible optical images with satellite base maps. However, under low-light conditions, visible cameras struggle to capture distinct features. While infrared sensors can capture clear features in such scenarios, the significant modality gap between thermal infrared images and optical satellite base maps makes accurate matching highly challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-modal super-resolution matching and geo-localization method constrained by geographic consistency. First, a geographic consistency normalization module is introduced to narrow the modality gap between satellite optical images and thermal infrared images, thereby enhancing cross-modal matchability. Subsequently, a thermal infrared super-resolution enhancement module is employed to improve the spatial resolution and detail representation of the images, effectively increasing feature discriminability in low-texture regions. Finally, an end-to-end dense matching module is utilized to strengthen the stability of cross-modal correspondence estimation, ultimately improving geo-localization accuracy in low-light environments. Extensive experiments conducted on both a self-constructed network dataset and a real-world flight dataset demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms current competitive approaches. The proposed framework is not a simple combination of existing enhancement and matching modules, but a task-driven design that jointly addresses cross-modal discrepancy, low-resolution thermal imagery, and robust correspondence estimation. Experiments on self-constructed and public datasets demonstrate its robustness and superiority, achieving average geo-localization errors of 1.31 m and 8.04 m, respectively.