Search Results (51)

Model-based polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) algorithms for bio- and geophysical parameter estimation rely on the effective separation of the combined scattering response of vegetation canopies and the soil surface through physically based models. However, the interpretation of polarimetric features derived from physical models is still subject to some ambiguity. Another strategy for complementing the model-based approaches for scattering mechanisms characterisation deals with the separation of the polarised and depolarised contributions of the PolSAR data according to their degree of polarisation. In this paper, we propose a two-component decomposition for estimating the depolarised and polarised components within the target and their corresponding coherency matrices. The method requires the previous calculation of the backscattering powers given by the model-free three-component (MF3C) decomposition, which in turn relies on the 3-D Barakat degree of polarisation. This quantitative information allows us to construct an inversion algorithm to retrieve the proportion of the polarised and depolarised contributions for all the elements of the observed coherency matrix under the reflection symmetry assumption. In essence, the proposed decomposition can be regarded as an extension of the MF3C method and, as a consequence, it enables the exploitation of both model-free and model-based approaches by using a physical rationale driven by the capability of the 3-D Barakat degree of polarisation. Therefore, practical applications can benefit from this approach as the retrieval of target parameters could presumably be done in a more accurate way by directly applying existing scattering models to both components. Indoor multi-frequency datasets acquired over three vegetation samples from the European Microwave Signature Laboratory (EMSL) and P-, L-, and C-band AIRSAR images over a boreal forest in Germany have been employed for testing the proposed decomposition. Performance analysis was performed using different polarimetric tools applied to the outcomes of the two-component decomposition, namely, the eigendecomposition and the copolar cross-correlation analysis of polarised and depolarised components, as well as histograms and a correlation analysis among backscattering powers. Overall, it has been observed that the method outputs are consistent with the theoretical expectations for the depolarised and polarised scattering components for a wide range of scenarios and sensor frequencies. Full article

In the task of PolSAR image classification, effectively utilizing convolutional neural networks and vision transformer models with limited labeled data poses a critical challenge. This article proposes a novel method for PolSAR image classification that combines channel-wise convolutional local perception, detachable self-attention, and a residual feedforward network. Specifically, the proposed method comprises several key modules. In the channel-wise convolutional local perception module, channel-wise convolution operations enable accurate extraction of local features from different channels of PolSAR images. The local residual connections further enhance these extracted features, providing more discriminative information for subsequent processing. Additionally, the detachable self-attention mechanism plays a pivotal role: it facilitates effective interaction between local and global information, enabling the model to comprehensively perceive features across different scales, thereby improving classification accuracy and robustness. Subsequently, replacing the conventional feedforward network with a residual feedforward network that incorporates residual structures aids the model in better representing local features, further enhances the capability of cross-layer gradient propagation, and effectively alleviates the problem of vanishing gradients during the training of deep networks. In the final classification stage, two fully connected layers with dropout prevent overfitting, while softmax generates predictions. The proposed method was validated on the AIRSAR Flevoland, RADARSAT-2 San Francisco, and RADARSAT-2 Xi’an datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can attain a high level of classification performance even with a limited amount of labeled data, and the model is relatively stable. Furthermore, the proposed method has lower computational costs than comparative methods. Full article

Speckle reduction is a key preprocessing approach for the applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. For many interpretation tasks, high-quality SAR images with a rich texture and structure information are useful. Therefore, a satisfactory SAR image filter should retain this information well after processing. Some quantitative assessment indicators have been presented to evaluate the edge-preservation capability of single-polarization SAR filters, among which the non-clean-reference-based (i.e., blind) ones are attractive. However, most of these indicators are derived based only on the basic fact that the speckle is a kind of multiplicative noise, and they do not take into account the detailed statistical distribution traits of SAR data, making the assessment not robust enough. Moreover, to our knowledge, there are no specific blind assessment indicators for fully Polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) filters up to now. In this paper, a blind assessment indicator based on an SAR Ratio Gradient Operator (RGO) and Confidence Interval Estimation (CIE) is proposed. The RGO is employed to quantify the edge gradient between two neighboring image patches in both the speckled and filtered data. A decision is then made as to whether the ratio gradient value in the filtered image is close to that in the unobserved clean image by considering the statistical traits of speckle and a CIE method. The proposed indicator is also extended to assess the PolSAR filters by transforming the polarimetric scattering matrix into a scalar which follows a Gamma distribution. Experiments on the simulated SAR dataset and three real-world SAR images acquired by ALOS-PALSAR, AirSAR, and TerraSAR-X validate the robustness and reliability of the proposed indicator. Full article

Polarimetric target decomposition algorithms have played an important role in extracting the scattering characteristics of buildings, crops, and other fields. However, there is limited research on the scattering characteristics of grasslands and a lack of volume scattering models established for grasslands. To improve the accuracy of the polarimetric target decomposition algorithm applicable to grassland environments, this paper proposes an adaptive polarimetric target decomposition algorithm (APD) based on the anisotropy degree (A). The adaptive volume scattering model is used in APD to model volume scattering in forest and grassland regions separately by adjusting the value of A. When A > 1, the particle shape becomes a disk, and the grassland canopy is approximated as a cloud layer composed of randomly oriented disk particles; when A < 1, the particle shape is a needle, simulating the scattering mechanism of forests. APD is applied to an L-band AirSAR dataset from San Francisco, a C-band AirSAR dataset from Hunshandak grassland in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and an X-band COSMO-SkyMed dataset from Xiwuqi grassland in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to verify the effectiveness of this method. Comparison studies are carried out to test the performance of APD over several target decomposition algorithms. The experimental results show that APD outperforms the algorithms tested in terms of this study in decomposition accuracy for grasslands and forests on different bands of data. Full article

In polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (POLSAR), it is of great significance for civil and military applications to find novel model-based decomposition methods suitable for ship detection in different detection backgrounds. Based on the physical interpretation of polarimetric decomposition theory and the Lasso rule for sparse features, we propose a four-component decomposition model, which is composed of surface scattering (Odd), double-bounce scattering (Dbl), volume scattering (Vol), and ±45° oriented dipole (Od). In principle, the Od component can describe the compounded scattering structure of a ship consisting of odd-bounce and even-bounce reflectors. Moreover, the pocket perceptron learning algorithm (PPLA) and support vector machine (SVM) are utilized to solve the linear inseparable problems in this study. Using large amounts of RADARSAT-2 (RS-2) fully polarized SAR data and AIRSAR data, our experimental results show that the Od component can make a great contribution to ship detection. Compared with other conventional decomposition methods used in the experiments, the proposed four-component decomposition method has better performance and is more effective and feasible to detect ships. Full article

The model-based polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) target decomposition decodes the scattering mechanism of the target by analyzing the essential scattering components. This paper presents a new general three-component scattering power decomposition method by establishing optimization problems. It is known that the existing three-component decomposition method prioritizes the contribution of volume scattering, which often leads to volume scattering energy overestimation and may make double-bounce scattering and odd-bounce scattering component power negative. In this paper, a full parameter optimization method based on the remainder matrix is proposed, where all the elements of the coherency matrix will be taken into account including the remaining T13 component. The optimization is achieved with no priority order by solving the problem using semi-definite programming (SDP) based on the Schur complement theory. By doing so, the problem of volume scattering energy overestimation and negative powers will be avoided. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated and evaluated with AIRSAR and GF-3 PolSAR data sets. The experimental results show that by using the proposed method, the power contributions of volume scattering in two sets of data were reduced by at least 2.6% and 3.7% respectively, compared to traditional methods. And the appearance of negative power of double-bounce scattering and odd-bounce scattering are also avoided compared with those of the existing three-component decomposition. Full article

Ship detection based on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is one of the key applications for maritime security. Compared with single-channel SAR images, polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data contains the fully-polarized information, which better facilitates better discriminating between targets, sea clutter, and interference. Therefore, many ship detection methods based on the polarimetric scattering mechanism have been studied. To deal with the false alarms caused by the existence of ghost targets, resulting from azimuth ambiguities and interference from side lobes, a modified polarimetric notch filter (PNF) is proposed for PolSAR ship detection. In the proposed method, the third eigenvalue obtained by the eigenvalue–eigenvector decomposition of the polarimetric covariance matrix is utilized to construct a new feature vector. Then, the target power can be computed to construct the modified PNF detector. On the one hand, the detection rate of ship targets can be enhanced by target-to-clutter contrast. On the other hand, false alarms resulting from azimuth ambiguities and side lobes can be reduced to an extent. Experimental results based on three C-band AIRSAR PolSAR datasets demonstrated the capability of the proposed PNF detector to improve detection performance while reducing false alarms. To be specific, the figure of merit (FoM) of the proposed method is the highest among comparative approaches with results of 80%, 100%, and 100% for the tested datasets, respectively. Full article

Vision transformers (ViT) have the characteristics of massive training data and complex model, which cannot be directly applied to polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) image classification tasks. Therefore, a mixed convolutional parallel transformer (MCPT) model based on ViT is proposed for fast PolSAR image classification. First of all, a mixed depthwise convolution tokenization is introduced. It replaces the learnable linear projection in the original ViT to obtain patch embeddings. The process of tokenization can reduce computational and parameter complexity and extract features of different receptive fields as input to the encoder. Furthermore, combining the idea of shallow networks with lower latency and easier optimization, a parallel encoder is implemented by pairing the same modules and recombining to form parallel blocks, which can decrease the network depth and computing power requirement. In addition, the original class embedding and position embedding are removed during tokenization, and a global average pooling layer is added after the encoder for category feature extraction. Finally, the experimental results on AIRSAR Flevoland and RADARSAT-2 San Francisco datasets show that the proposed method achieves a significant improvement in training and prediction speed. Meanwhile, the overall accuracy achieved was 97.9% and 96.77%, respectively. Full article

Recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown significant advantages in the tasks of image classification; however, these usually require a large number of labeled samples for training. In practice, it is difficult and costly to obtain sufficient labeled samples of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images. To address this problem, we propose a novel semi-supervised classification method for PolSAR images in this paper, using the co-training of CNN and a support vector machine (SVM). In our co-training method, an eight-layer CNN with residual network (ResNet) architecture is designed as the primary classifier, and an SVM is used as the auxiliary classifier. In particular, the SVM is used to enhance the performance of our algorithm in the case of limited labeled samples. In our method, more and more pseudo-labeled samples are iteratively yielded for training through a two-stage co-training of CNN and SVM, which gradually improves the performance of the two classifiers. The trained CNN is employed as the final classifier due to its strong classification capability with enough samples. We carried out experiments on two C-band airborne PolSAR images acquired by the AIRSAR systems and an L-band spaceborne PolSAR image acquired by the GaoFen-3 system. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively integrate the complementary advantages of SVM and CNN, providing overall classification accuracy of more than 97%, 96% and 93% with limited labeled samples (10 samples per class) for the above three images, respectively, which is superior to the state-of-the-art semi-supervised methods for PolSAR image classification. Full article

The expensive acquisition of labeled data limits the practical use of supervised learning on polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) image analysis. Semi-supervised learning has attracted considerable attention as it can utilize few labeled data and very many unlabeled data. The scattering response of PolSAR data is strongly spatial distribution dependent, which provides rich information about land-cover properties. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised learning method named multi-domain fusion graph network (MDFGN) to explore the multi-domain fused features including spatial domain and feature domain. Three major factors strengthen the proposed method for PolSAR image analysis. Firstly, we propose a novel sample selection criterion to select reliable unlabeled data for training set expansion. Multi-domain fusion graph is proposed to improve the feature diversity by extending the sample selection from the feature domain to the spatial-feature fusion domain. In this way, the selecting accuracy is improved. By few labeled data, very many accurate unlabeled data are obtained. Secondly, multi-model triplet encoder is proposed to achieve superior feature extraction. Equipped with triplet loss, limited training samples are fully utilized. For expanding training samples with different patch sizes, multiple models are obtained for the fused classification result acquisition. Thirdly, multi-level fusion strategy is proposed to apply different image patch sizes for different expanded training data and obtain the fused classification result. The experiments are conducted on Radarsat-2 and AIRSAR images. With few labeled samples (about 0.003–0.007%), the overall accuracy of the proposed method ranges between 94.78% and 99.24%, which demonstrates the proposed method’s robustness and excellence. Full article

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images contain useful information, which can lead to extensive land cover interpretation and a variety of output products. In contrast to optical imagery, there are several challenges in extracting beneficial features from PolSAR data. Deep learning (DL) methods can provide solutions to address PolSAR feature extraction challenges. The convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and graph convolutional networks (GCNs) can drive PolSAR image characteristics by deploying kernel abilities in considering neighborhood (local) information and graphs in considering long-range similarities. A novel dual-branch fusion of CNN and mini-GCN is proposed in this study for PolSAR image classification. To fully utilize the PolSAR image capacity, different spatial-based and polarimetric-based features are incorporated into CNN and mini-GCN branches of the proposed model. The performance of the proposed method is verified by comparing the classification results to multiple state-of-the-art approaches on the airborne synthetic aperture radar (AIRSAR) dataset of Flevoland and San Francisco. The proposed approach showed 1.3% and 2.7% improvements in overall accuracy compared to conventional methods with these AIRSAR datasets. Meanwhile, it enhanced its one-branch version by 0.73% and 1.82%. Analyses over Flevoland data further indicated the effectiveness of the dual-branch model using varied training sampling ratios, leading to a promising overall accuracy of 99.9% with a 10% sampling ratio. Full article

As sea-crossing bridges are important hubs connecting separated land areas, their detection in SAR images is of great significance. However, under complex scenarios, the sea surface conditions, the distribution of coastal terrain morphologies, and the scattering components of different structures in the bridge area are very complex and diverse, which makes the accurate and robust detection of sea-crossing bridges difficult, including the sea–land segmentation and bridge feature extraction on which the detection depends. In this paper, we propose a polarimetric SAR image detection method for sea-crossing bridges based on windowed level set segmentation and polarization parameter discrimination. Firstly, the sea and land are segmented by a proposed windowed level set segmentation method, which replaces the construction of the level set segmentation energy function based on the isolated pixel distribution with a joint distribution of pixels in a certain window region. Secondly, water regions of interest are extracted by a proposed water region merging algorithm combining the distances of the water contour and polarization similarity parameter. Finally, the bridge regions of interest (ROIs) are extracted by merging close water contours, and the ROIs are discriminated by the polarimetric parameters of the polarization entropy and scattering angle. Experimental results using multiple AirSAR, RADARSAT-2, and TerraSAR-X quad-polarization SAR data from the coastal areas of San Francisco in the USA, Singapore, and Fuzhou, Fujian, and Zhanjiang, Guangdong, in China show that the proposed method can achieve 100% detection of sea-crossing bridges in different bands for different scenes, and the accuracy of the intersection of the ground-truth (IoG) index of bridge body recognition can reach more than 85%. The proposed method can improve the detection rate and reduce the false alarm rate compared with the traditional spatial-based method. Full article

As a special dual-polarization technique, compact polarimetric (CP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has already been widely studied and installed on some spaceborne systems due to its superiority to quad-polarization; moreover, quad-pol information can be explored and reconstructed from the CP SAR data. In this paper, a refined model is proposed to estimate the quad-pol information for the CP mode. This model involves CP decomposition, wherein the polarization degree is introduced as the volume scattering model parameter. Moreover, a power-weighted model for the co-polarized coherence coefficient is proposed to avoid the iterative approach in pseudo-quad-pol information reconstruction. Experiments were implemented on the simulated Gaofen-3 and ALOS-2 data collected over San Francisco. Compared with typical reconstruction models, the proposed refined model shows its superiority in estimating the quad-pol information. Furthermore, terrain classification experiments using a complex-value convolutional neural network (CV-CNN) were performed on AIRSAR Flevoland data to validate the reconstruction effectiveness for classification applications. Full article

Superpixel segmentation for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images plays a key role in remote-sensing tasks, such as ship detection and land-cover classification. However, the existing methods cannot directly generate multi-scale superpixels in a hierarchical style and they will take a long time when multi-scale segmentation is executed separately. In this article, we propose an effective and accurate hierarchical superpixel segmentation method, by introducing a minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithm called the Boruvka algorithm. To accurately measure the difference between neighboring pixels, we obtain the scattering mechanism information derived from the model-based refined 5-component decomposition (RFCD) and construct a comprehensive dissimilarity measure. In addition, the edge strength map and homogeneity measurement are considered to make use of the structural and spatial distribution information in the PolSAR image. On this basis, we can generate superpixels using the distance metric along with the MST framework. The proposed method can maintain good segmentation accuracy at multiple scales, and it generates superpixels in real time. According to the experimental results on the ESAR and AIRSAR datasets, our method is faster than the current state-of-the-art algorithms and preserves somewhat more image details in different segmentation scales. Full article

Deep learning methods have been widely studied for Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) land cover classification. The scarcity of PolSAR labeled samples and the small receptive field of the model limit the performance of deep learning methods for land cover classification. In this paper, a vision Transformer (ViT)-based classification method is proposed. The ViT structure can extract features from the global range of images based on a self-attention block. The powerful feature representation capability of the model is equivalent to a flexible receptive field, which is suitable for PolSAR image classification at different resolutions. In addition, because of the lack of labeled data, the Mask Autoencoder method is used to pre-train the proposed model with unlabeled data. Experiments are carried out on the Flevoland dataset acquired by NASA/JPL AIRSAR and the Hainan dataset acquired by the Aerial Remote Sensing System of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The experimental results on both datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method. Full article