How to convert latitude and longitude of location to cartesian coordinates (x, y)?

Dear Sir,

Is there a feasible way of converting (lat, long) coordinates into cartesian corordinates (x, y) of respective locations?

For instance, i want to convert (27.2046° N, 77.4977° E) coordinates into (x, y).

Answer 1

[Chunru]

First, you need a reference point. Second you have to assume that the posints are close enough to the reference points so that the spherical coordinates on earth surface (lat, lon) can be approximate in cartesian coordinates.

With these assumption, you can do the following:

ref = [27, 77];         % ref point [lat, lon]
p = [27.2046, 77.4977];
[arclen az] = distance(ref, p) 

arclen = 0.4880

az = 65.0993

x = deg2km(arclen.*cosd(az)); 
y = deg2km(arclen.*sind(az)); 
[x, y]

ans = 1×2

22.8478 49.2198

[ANURAG DEEPAK]

How is distance (ref, p) function defined? And, how can i choose reference point for the very first point in the dataset?

[Chunru]

"doc distance" for more details.

You can use the center of of data points as the reference point.

[Lars]

It seems like "distance" needs some toolbox: