The polarimetric features of oil spills in full polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images

Compared with single-polarized synthetic aperture radar （SAR） images, full polarimetric SAIl images contain not only geometrical and backward scattering characteristics, but also the polarization features of the scattering targets. Therefore, the polarimetric SAR has more advantages for oil spill detection on the sea surface. As a crucial step in the oil spill detection, a feature extraction directly influences the accuracy of oil spill discrimination. The polarimetric features of sea oil spills, such as polarimetric entropy, average scatter angle, in the full polarimetric SAR images are analyzed firstly. And a new polarimetric parameter P which reflects the proportion between Bragg and specular scattering signals is proposed. In order to investigate the capability of the polarimetric features for observing an oil spill, systematic comparisons and analyses of the multipolarization features are provided on the basis of the full polarimetric SAR images acquired by SIR-C/X-SAR and Radarsat-2. The experiment results show that in C-band SAR images the oil spills can be detected more easily than in L-band SAR images under low to moderate wind speed conditions. Moreover, it also finds that the new polarimetric parameter is sensitive to the sea surface scattering mechanisms. And the experiment results demonstrate that the new polarimetric parameter and pedestal height perform better than other polarimetric parameters for the oil spill detection in the C-band SAR images.

Coastal wind field retrieval from polarimetric synthetic aperture radar

Coastal winds are strongly influenced by topology and discontinuity between land and sea surfaces. Wind assessment from remote sensing in such a complex area remains a challenge. Space-borne scatterometer does not provide any information about the coastal wind field, as the coarse spatial resolution hampers the radar backscattering. Synthetic aperture radar （SAR） with a high spatial resolution and all-weather observation abilities has become one of the most important tools for ocean wind retrieval, especially in the coastal area. Conventional methods of wind field retrieval from SAR, however, require wind direction as initial information, such as the wind direction from numerical weather prediction models （NWP）, which may not match the time of SAR image acquiring. Fortunately, the polarimetric observations of SAR enable independent wind retrieval from SAR images alone. In order to accurately measure coastal wind fields, this paper proposes a new method of using co-polarization backscattering coefficients from polarimetric SAR observations up to polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients, which are acquired from the conjugate product of co-polarization backscatter and cross-polarization backscatter. Co-polarization backscattering coefficients and polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients are obtained form Radarsat-2 single-look complex （SLC） data.The maximum likelihood estimation is used to gain the initial results followed by the coarse spatial filtering and fine spatial filtering. Wind direction accuracy of the final inversion results is 10.67 with a wind speed accuracy of 0.32 m/s. Unlike previous methods, the methods described in this article utilize the SAR data itself to obtain the wind vectors and do not need external wind directional information. High spatial resolution and high accuracy are the most important features of the method described herein since the use of full polarimetric observations contains more information about the space measured.This article is a useful addition to the work of independent SAR wind retrieval. The experimental results herein show that it is feasible to employ the co-polarimetric backscattering coefficients and the polarimetric correlation backscattering coefficients for coastal wind field retrieval.

Novel polarimetric SAR speckle filtering algorithm based on mean shift

For better interpretation of synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images,the speckle filtering is an important issue.In the area of speckle filtering,the proper averaging of samples with similar scattering characteristics is of great importance.However,existing filtering algorithms are either lack of a similarity judgment of scattering characteristics or using only intensity information for similarity judgment.A novel polarimetric SAR（PolSAR） speckle filtering algorithm based on the mean shift theory is proposed.As polarimetric covariance matrices or coherency matrices form Riemannian manifold,the pixels with similar scattering characteristics gather closely and those with different scattering characteristics separate in this hyperspace.By using the range-spatial joint mean shift theory in Riemannian manifold,the pixels chosen for averaging are ensured to be close not only in scattering characteristics but also in the spatial domain.German Aerospace Center（DLR） L-Band Experiment SAR（E-SAR） data and East China Research Institute of Electronic Engineering（ECRIEE） PolSAR data are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.The filtering results of two commonly used speckle filtering algorithms,refined Lee filtering algorithm and intensity driven adaptive neighborhood（IDAN） filtering algorithm,are also presented for the comparison purpose.Experiment results show that the proposed speckle filtering algorithm achieves a good performance in terms of speckle filtering,edge protection as well as polarimetric characteristics preservation.

Improved SMB speckle filtering of polarimetric SAR data with synergistic use of orientation angle compensation and spatial majority rule

The scattering-model-based(SMB)speckle filtering for polarimetric SAR(Pol SAR)data is reasonably effective in preserving dominant scattering mechanisms.However,the efficiency strongly depends on the accuracies of both the decomposition and classification of the scattering properties.In addition,a relatively weak speckle reduction particularly in distributed media was reported in the related literatures.In this work,an improved SMB filtering strategy is proposed considering the aforementioned deficiencies.First,the orientation angle compensation is incorporated into the SMB filtering process to remedy the overestimation of the volume scattering contribution in the Freeman-Durden decomposition.In addition,an algorithm to select the homogenous pixels is developed based on the spatial majority rule for adaptive speckle reduction.We demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods in terms of scattering property preservation and speckle noise reduction using L-band Pol SAR data sets of San Francisco that were acquired by the NASA/JPL airborne SAR(AIRSAR)system.

Polarimetric entropy of the ocean surface with a two-scale scattering model

The relationships among an ocean wave spectrum,a fully polarimetric coherence matrix,and radar parameters are deduced with an electromagnetic wave theory.Furthermore,the relationship between the polarimetric entropy and ocean wave spectrum is established based on the definition of entropy and a twoscale scattering model of the ocean surface.It is the first time that the polarimetric entropy of the ocean surface is presented in theory.Meanwhile,the relationships among the fully polarimetric entropy and the parameters related to radar and ocean are discussed.The study is the basis of further monitoring targets on the ocean surface and deriving oceanic information with the entropy from the ocean surface.The contrast enhancement between human-made targets and the ocean surface with the entropy is presented with quad-pol airborne synthetic aperture radar（AIRSAR） data.

New algorithm of target classification in polarimetric SAR

The different approaches used for target decomposition （TD） theory in radar polarimetry are reviewed and three main types of theorems are introduced： those based on Mueller matrix, those using an eigenvector analysis of the coherency matrix, and those employing coherent decomposition of the scattering matrix. Support vector machine （SVM）, as a novel approach in pattern recognition, has demonstrated success in many fields. A new algorithm of target classification, by combining target decomposition and the support vector machine, is proposed. To conduct the experiment, the polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （SAR） data are used. Experimental results show that it is feasible and efficient to target classification by applying target decomposition to extract scattering mechanisms, and the effects of kernel function and its parameters on the classification efficiency are significant.

A method for coastal oil tank detection in polarimetric SAR images based on recognition of T-shaped harbor

To automatically detect oil tanks in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images, a coastal oil tank detection method is proposed based on recognition of T-shaped harbor. First of all, the T-shaped harbor is detected to locate the region of interest（ROI） of oil tanks. Then all suspicious targets in the ROI are extracted by the segmentation of strong scattering targets and the classifier of H/α. The template targets are selected from the suspicious targets by the combination of a proposed circular degree parameter and the similarity parameter（SP） of the polarimetric coherency matrix. Finally, oil tanks are detected according to the statistics of the similarity parameter between each suspicious target and template targets in ROI. Polarimetric SAR data acquired by RADARSAT-2 over Berkeley and Singapore areas are used for testing. Experiment results show that most of the targets are correctly detected and the overall detection rate is close to 80%.The false rate is effectively reduced by the proposed algorithm compared with the method without T-shaped harbor recognition.

基于面向对象的极化雷达影像分类

有效的PolSAR影像分类技术是PolSAR成功应用的基础,然而相比于比较成熟的PolSAR成像技术与系统设计,PolSAR影像分类技术的发展相对滞后,针对PolSAR影像面向对象分类研究中存在的问题,提出了一种新的结合多种目标极化分解、ReliefF-PSO_SVM和集成学习的PolSAR影像面向对象分类方法。该方法首先采用多种方法对PolSAR影像进行目标极化分解;然后将利用不同极化分解方法提取的极化参数组合成一幅多通道影像;接下来对多通道影像进行分割、特征提取;采用ReliefF-PSO_SVM算法进行特征选择,并保留适应度最高的N个特征子集进行分类,每一个特征子集对应一个分类结果;最后利用集成学习技术对各分类结果进行集成。以吉林省长春市部分区域为研究区,Radarsat2影像为数据源,将提出的方法应用于土地利用分类中,取得了较好的分类效果,总体精度和Kappa系数分别达到了85.06%和0.8006。此外,还构建了3种对比方法用于分类,对比结果进一步证明了所提方法在PolSAR影像分类中的优越性。

Region-based classification by combining MS segmentation and MRF for POLSAR images

Speckle effects on classification results can be sup- pressed to some extent by introducing the contextual information. An unsupervised classification algorithm is proposed for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar （POLSAR） images based on the mean shift （MS） segmentation and Markov random field （MRF）. First, polarimetdc features are exacted by target decomposition for MS segmentation. An initial classification is executed by using the target decomposition and the agglomerative hierarchical clus- tering algorithm. Thereafter, a classification step based on MRF is performed by using the mean coherence matrices obtained for each segment. Under the MRF framework, the smoothness term is defined according to the distance between neighboring areas. By using POLSAR images acquired by the German Aerospace Centre and National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the experimental results confirm that the proposed method has higher accuracy and better regional connectivity than other classification methods.

Multi-polarization reconstruction from compact polarimetry based on modified four-component scattering decomposition

An improved algorithm for multi-polarization reconstruction from compact polarimetry （CP） is proposed. According to two fundamental assumptions in compact polarimetric reconstruction, two improvements are proposed. Firstly, the four-component model-based decomposition algorithm is modified with a new volume scattering model. The decomposed helix scattering component is then used to deal with the non-reflection symmetry condition in compact polarimetric measurements. Using the decomposed power and considering the scattering mechanism of each component, an average relationship between copolarized and crosspolarized channels is developed over the original polarization state extrapolation model. E-SAR polarimetric data acquired over the Oberpfaffenhofen area and JPL/AIRSAR polarimetric data acquired over San Francisco are used for verification, and good reconstruction results are obtained, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Robust PolInSAR optimal interferogram estimation method based on generalized scattering vector

For the polarimetric synthetic aperture radar interferometry (PoIInSAR) processing, it is necessary to coregister all the images, including the coregistration of polarimetric SAR images and the coregistration of interferometric SAR images. Otherwise, the performance of the estimated optimal interferograms will be deteriorated. A generalized scattering vector (GSV) model is proposed to execute the PoIInSAR optimal interferograms estimation. The generalized scattering vector is constructed by the Pauli scattering vectors of the processing pixel and the surrounding pixels. Even though there are coregistration errors, all the polarimetric information of the current processing pixel is entirely included in the generalized scattering vector. Therefore, the GSV-based method can automatically recover the optimal scattering mechanisms of the processing pixel with coregistration errors either in interferoemetric channels or polarimetric channels. Theoretical analysis and processing results of simulated PoISARPro data and real PALSAR data validate the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed method.

Contrast Enhancement Method of POLSAR Images Based on Target Decomposition Theory

Improving the target-clutter ratio （TCR） of moving targets in synthetic aperture radar （SAR）, imagery is very important for target detection and identification. In this paper, using the Cloude＇s decomposition theory, an average eovarianee matrix can be decomposed into a summation of matrices representing three different scattering processes： the single bounce scattering, double bounce scattering, and diffuse scattering. A new idea of using the combination of the three components to enhance the contrast of an image is proposed. In order to compare with the polarimetric contrast enhancement method based on HH, HV, and W data, ship areas of two combinatorial intensity images are detected by image binarization. Experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper provides better contrast.

Adaptive polarimetric decomposition using incoherent ground scattering models without reflection symmetry assumption

Most of the current incoherent polarimetric decompositions employ coherent models to describe ground scattering;however,this cannot truly reflect the fact especially in natural ground surfaces.This paper proposes a highly adaptive decomposition with incoherent ground scattering models(ADIGSM).In ADIGSM,Neumann’s adaptive model is employed to describe volume scattering,and to explain cross-polarized power in remainder matrix,so that we can obtain orientation angle randomness for both volume scattering and the dominant ground scattering.The computation of volume scattering parameters is strictly constrained for non-negative eigenvalues,while the volume scattering parameters that explain the most cross-polarized power are selected.When applying ADIGSM to NASA’s UAVSAR data,the negative component powers were obtained in quite a few forest pixels.Compared with several newest decompositions,the volume scattering power is obviously lowered,especially in areas dominated by surface scattering or double bounce scattering.The orientation angle randomness of each component is reasonable as well.ADIGSM has potential to be applied in the fields such as PolSAR image classification,land cover mapping,speckle filtering,soil moisture and roughness estimation,etc.

采用PolInSAR技术反演植被高度的算法应用与研究进展

极化合成孔径雷达干涉测量(polarimetric interferometric synthetic aperture radar,PolInSAR)技术是提取植被高度的有效手段,应用其进行植被高度反演已经有20多年的历史。旨在通过分析近年来国内外基于PolInSAR技术的植被高度反演研究的现状,以全面、深入了解当前国际研究动态。