# Structure-Aware Matching for Robust UAV Thermal-to-Satellite Geo-Localization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.12835 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.12835/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07004/) (2016)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Domain Adaptation by Backpropagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.7495/) (2014)
- [CyCADA: Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03213/) (2017)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [Patch-NetVLAD: Multi-Scale Fusion of Locally-Global Descriptors for Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01486/) (2021)
- [Wide-Area Image Geolocalization with Aerial Reference Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03743/) (2015)
- [University-1652: A Multi-view Multi-source Benchmark for Drone-based Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12186/) (2020)
- [Richer Convolutional Features for Edge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02103/) (2016)
- [Sample4Geo: Hard Negative Sampling For Cross-View Geo-Localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11851/) (2023)
- [Each Part Matters: Local Patterns Facilitate Cross-view Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11646/) (2020)
- [Deep Visual Geo-localization Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03444/) (2022)
- [Batch-Instance Normalization for Adaptively Style-Invariant Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07925/) (2018)
- [SUES-200: A Multi-height Multi-scene Cross-view Image Benchmark Across Drone and Satellite](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10704/) (2022)
- [A Transformer-Based Feature Segmentation and Region Alignment Method For UAV-View Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09206/) (2022)
- [Deep Hough Transform for Semantic Line Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04676/) (2020)
- [Implicit Discriminative Knowledge Learning for Visible-Infrared Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11708/) (2024)
- [UAV Pose Estimation using Cross-view Geolocalization with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.05979/) (2018)
- [UAV Localization Using Autoencoded Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05692/) (2021)
- [Long-range UAV Thermal Geo-localization with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.02994/) (2023)
- [Oriented object detection in optical remote sensing images using deep learning: a survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.10473/) (2023)
- [Bridging the Gap: Multi-Level Cross-Modality Joint Alignment for Visible-Infrared Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08316/) (2023)
- [STHN: Deep Homography Estimation for UAV Thermal Geo-localization with Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20470/) (2024)
- [AnyThermal: Towards Learning Universal Representations for Thermal Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.06203/) (2026)
- [UASTHN: Uncertainty-Aware Deep Homography Estimation for UAV Satellite-Thermal Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01035/) (2025)
- [SCC-Loc: A Unified Semantic Cascade Consensus Framework for UAV Thermal Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03120/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

UAV thermal-to-satellite geo-localization localizes UAVs by matching real-time thermal images against georeferenced satellite images, enabling autonomous navigation in GNSS-denied and low-visibility conditions. However, substantial cross-modal disparities in color, brightness and viewpoint hinder conventional appearance-based methods from establishing reliable correspondences. While existing approaches predominantly address global modality shifts, they overlook the invariant scene structures inherently shared between thermal and satellite views. To bridge this gap, we propose SAMF, a Structure-Aware Matching Framework that explicitly exploits stable cross-modal structural cues to improve UAV thermal geolocalization. Specifically, the Directional Structure Enhancement Module (DSEM) strengthens robust structural representations by capturing directional and low-frequency spatial patterns, and the Modality-Aware Affine Remapping Module (MARM) subsequently applies affine correction to these enhanced features, further promoting cross-modal alignment. Additionally, we introduce the Thermal-UAV-Paired benchmark derived from the Thermal-UAV dataset. Extensive experiments on both the Boson-nighttime and Thermal-UAV-Paired datasets show that SAMF achieves state-of-the-art performance. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness and synergistic complementarity of DSEM and MARM. The code and dataset are released at: https://github.com/YuxinWang879/SAMF.git.