Information compression and speckle reduction for multifrequency polarimetric SAR images based on kernel PCA

Multifrequency polarimetric SAR imagery provides a very convenient approach for signal processing and acquisition of radar image. However, the amount of information is scattered in several images, and redundancies exist between different bands and polarizations. Similar to signal-polarimetric SAR image, multifrequency polarimetric SAR image is corrupted with speckle noise at the same time. A method of information compression and speckle reduction for multifrequency polarimetric SAR imagery is presented based on kernel principal component analysis （KPCA）. KPCA is a nonlinear generalization of the linear principal component analysis using the kernel trick. The NASA/JPL polarimetric SAR imagery of P, L, and C bands quadpolarizations is used for illustration. The experimental results show that KPCA has better capability in information compression and speckle reduction as compared with linear PCA.

Targets detecting in the ocean using the cross-polarized channels of fully polarimetric SAR data

Azimuth ambiguities （ghost targets） discrimination is of great interest with the development of a synthet- ic aperture radar （SAR）. And the azimuth ambiguities are often mistaken as actual targets and cause false alarms. For actual targets, HV channel signals acquired by a fully polarimetric SAR are approximately equal to a VH channel in magnitude and phase, i.e., the reciprocity theorem applies, but shifted in phase about ±π for the first-order azimuth ambiguities. Exploiting this physical behavior, the real part of the product of the two cross-polarized channels, i.e. （SHVSVH）, hereafter called A12r, is employed as a new parameter for a target detection at sea. Compared with other parameters, the contrast of A12r image between a target and the surrounding sea surface will be obviously increased when A12r image is processed by mean filtering algo- rithm. Here, in order to detect target with constant false-alarm rates （CFARs）, an analytical expression for the probability density function （pdf） ofA12r is derived based on the complexWishart-distribution. Because a value of A12r is greater/less than 0 for real target/its azimuth ambiguities, the first-order azimuth ambiguities can be completely removed by this A12r-based CFAR technology. Experiments accomplished over C-band RADARSAT-2 fully polarimetric imageries confirm the validity.

Structural adaptive and optimal speckle filtering in multilook full polarimetric SAR images

A novel approach is proposed for speckle reduction in multilook full polarimetric SAR images. In contrast to others, this approach adopts an enhanced structure detection method to estimate the parameters of the polarimetric covariance matrix for the multilook polarimetric whitening filtering （MPWF） algorithm and thus a structural adaptive and optimal speckle filter is developed. To evaluate the present approach, NASA SIR-C/X- SAR, L band, four-look processed polarimetric SAR data of the Tian-Mountain Forest is used for simulation. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this novel filtering algorithm in case of both speckle reduction and preservation of texture information. Comparisons with other methods are also made.

Supervised polarimetric SAR classification method based on Fisher linear discriminant

A supervised polarimetric SAR land cover classification method was proposed based on the Fisher linear discriminant. The feature parameters used in this classification method could be se- lected flexibly according to land covers to be classified. Polarimetric and texture feature parameters extracted from co-registered multifrequency and multi-temporal polarimetric SAR data could be com- bined together for classification use, without consideration of the dimension difference of each fea- ture parameter and the joint probability density function of those parameters. Experimental result with AGRSAR L/C-band full polarimetric SAR data showed that a total classification accuracy of 94. 33% was achieved by combining the polarimetric with texture feature parameters extracted from L/C dual band SAR data, demonstrating the effectiveness of this method.

ADAPTIVE MODEL-BASED SCATTERING DECOMPOSITION OF POLARIMETRIC SAR INTERFEROMETRY

In this paper,a new decomposition method is proposed to solve the problems that vegetation component is overestimated and is not sensitive to directional scattering features with traditional polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)decomposition.It uses a Polarimetric Interferometric Similarity Parameter(PISP)calculated from Polarimetric SAR Interferometry(PolInSAR)datasets to the scattering decomposition.The PISP is proposed to reveal the geometric sensitivity of SAR interferometry.It is defined by three optimized mechanisms obtained from PolInSAR datasets,therefore,it not only relates to the coherent scattering mechanism closely,but also sufficiently uses the phase and amplitude information.The PISP of building is high,and forest’s PISP is low.The proposed method uses the PISP as a judge condition to select different vegetation model adaptively.The decomposition results show the proposed method can effectively solve the vegetation ingredients overestimation problem.In addition,it is sensitive to the directional scattering.

AN UNSUPERVISED CLASSIFICATION FOR FULLY POLARIMETRIC SAR DATA USING SPAN/H/α IHSL TRANSFORM AND THE FCM ALGORITHM

In this paper, the IHSL transform and the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) segmentation algorithm are combined together to perform the unsupervised classification for fully polarimetric Synthetic Ap-erture Rader (SAR) data. We apply the IHSL colour transform to H/α/SPANspace to obtain a new space (RGB colour space) which has a uniform distinguishability among inner parameters and contains the whole polarimetric information in H/α/SPAN.Then the FCM algorithm is applied to this RGB space to finish the classification procedure. The main advantages of this method are that the parameters in the color space have similar interclass distinguishability, thus it can achieve a high performance in the pixel based segmentation algorithm, and since we can treat the parameters in the same way, the segmentation procedure can be simplified. The experiments show that it can provide an improved classification result compared with the method which uses the H/α/SPANspace di-rectly during the segmentation procedure.

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.

Fine classification of rice paddy using multitemporal compact polarimetric SAR C band data based on machine learning methods

Rice is an important food crop for human beings.Accurately distinguishing different varieties and sowing methods of rice on a large scale can provide more accurate information for rice growth monitoring,yield estimation,and phenological monitoring,which has significance for the development of modern agriculture.Compact polarimetric(CP)synthetic aperture radar(SAR)provides multichannel information and shows great potential for rice monitoring and mapping.Currently,the use of machine learning methods to build classification models is a controversial topic.In this paper,the advantages of CP SAR data,the powerful learning ability of machine learning,and the important factors of the rice growth cycle were taken into account to achieve high-precision and fine classification of rice paddies.First,CP SAR data were simulated by using the seven temporal RADARSAT-2 C-band data sets.Second,20-two CP SAR parameters were extracted from each of the seven temporal CP SAR data sets.In addition,we fully considered the change degree of CP SAR parameters on a time scale(ΔCP_(DoY)).Six machine learning methods were employed to carry out the fine classification of rice paddies.The results show that the classification methods of machine learning based on multitemporal CP SAR data can obtain better results in the fine classification of rice paddies by considering the parameters ofΔCP_(DoY).The overall accuracy is greater than 95.05%,and the Kappa coefficient is greater than 0.937.Among them,the random forest(RF)and support vector machine(SVM)achieve the best results,with an overall accuracy reaching 97.32%and 97.37%,respectively,and Kappa coefficient values reaching 0.965 and 0.966,respectively.For the two types of rice paddies,the average accuracy of the transplant hybrid(T-H)rice paddy is greater than 90.64%,and the highest accuracy is 95.95%.The average accuracy of direct-sown japonica(D-J)rice paddy is greater than 92.57%,and the highest accuracy is 96.13%.

Shallow sea topography detection using fully Polarimetric Gaofen-3 SAR data based on swell patterns

Compared to single-polarization synthetic aperture radar(SAR)data,fully polarimetric SAR data can provide more detailed information of the sea surface,which is important for applications such as shallow sea topography detection.The Gaofen-3 satellite provides abundant polarimetric SAR data for ocean research.In this paper,a shallow sea topography detection method was proposed based on fully polarimetric Gaofen-3 SAR data.This method considers swell patterns and only requires SAR data and little prior knowledge of the water depth to detect shallow sea topography.Wave tracking was performed based on preprocessed fully polarimetric SAR data,and the water depth was then calculated considering the wave parameters and the linear dispersion relationships.In this paper,four study areas were selected for experiments,and the experimental results indicated that the polarimetric scattering parameterαhad higher detection accuracy than quad-polarization images.The mean relative errors were 14.52%,10.30%,12.56%,and 12.90%,respectively,in the four study areas.In addition,this paper also analyzed the detection ability of this model for different topographies,and the experiments revealed that the topography could be well recognized when the topography gradient is small,the topography gradient direction is close to the wave propagation direction,and the isobath line is regular.

Ocean surface wave measurements from fully polarimetric SAR imagery

A new method for the retrieval of ocean wave parameters from SAR imagery is developed,based on the shape-from-shading(SFS)technique.Previously,the SFS technique has been used in the reconstruction of 3D landform information from SAR images,in order to generate elevation maps of topography for land surfaces.Here,in order to retrieve ocean wave characteristics,we apply the SFS methodology,together with a method to orient the angular measurements of the azimuth slope and range slope,in the measurement of ocean surface waves.This method is applied to high resolution fine-quad polarization mode(HH,VV,VH and HV)C-band RADARSAT-2 SAR imagery,in order to retrieve ocean wave spectra and extract wave parameters.Collocated in situ buoy measurements are used to validate the reliability of this method.Results show that the method can reliably estimate wave height,dominant wave period,dominant wave length and dominant wave direction from C-band SAR images.The advantage of this method is that it does not depend on modulation transfer functions(MTFs),in order to measure ocean surface waves.This method can be used in monitoring ocean surface wave propagation through open water areas into ice-covered areas,especially the marginal ice zone(MIZ)in polar oceans.

Oil spill detection on the ocean surface using hybrid polarimetric SAR imagery

Hybrid-polarimetric SAR(synthetic aperture radar) is a new SAR mode, with relatively simple architecture, low cost, and wide swath, which will be carried by several Earth-observing systems from now to the near future. Here, we show how the second Stokes parameter of hybrid-polarimetric SAR can be employed to detect oil on the ocean surface using the classic well-known Otsu threshold methodology, in relation to contributions from different polarizations and dampening effects on backscatter intensity, neglecting the specific scattering mechanisms and oil types for an oil-covered surface. The detection methodology is demonstrated to be reliable in three example cases: oil-on-water experiments conducted by the Norwegian Clean Seas Association, natural oil seeps from the Gulf of Mexico, and observations from the Deep Water Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010.

Detection of weak ship signals with the optimization of polarimetric contrast enhancement

An optimization of polarimetric contrast enhancement method is proposed to detect ships with lowship-to-clutter power ratio.The received power is calculated with Kennaugh matrix and an iterative algo-rithm is adopted to get the optimal polarimetric states.The optimization method depresses the power of o-cean clutter and increases the power of ship signal.With the double effects,the contrast of ship to oceanis dramatically increased.Thus small ship or weak signals of low ship-to-ocean power ratio can easily bedetected.Ship signals can be distinguished from speckle noise using the different variation trend after op-timization,and thus the threshold problem can be avoided.Moreover,the analyses of different ship'sKennaugh matrices give two implications.One is that the results are affected little by choosing differentKennaugh matrices of ships with strong intensity from Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)images.The otheris that ship's Kennaugh matrix chosen from real SAR images is more favorable than that of ideal scatter-ing.Finally,the optimization results are confirmed by polarimetric scattering angle and co-polarizationphase difference.

Fully Polarimetric Land Cover Classification Based on Markov Chains

A novel land cover classification procedure is presented utilizing the information content of fully polarimetric SAR images. The Cameron coherent target decomposition (CTD) is employed to characterize land cover pixel by pixel. Cameron’s CTD is employed since it provides a complete set of elementary scattering mechanisms to describe the physical properties of the scatterer. The novelty of the proposed land classification approach lies on the fact that the features used for classification are not the types of the elementary scatterers themselves, but the way these types of scatterers alternate from pixel to pixel on the SAR image. Thus, transition matrices that represent local Markov models are used as classification features for land cover classification. The classification rule employs only the most important transitions for decision making. The Frobenius inner product is employed as similarity measure. Ten different types of land cover are used for testing the proposed method. In this aspect, the classification performance is significantly high.

UNSUPERVISED POLINSAR CLASSIFICATION BASED ON OPTIMAL COHERENCE SET

Aiming to solve the misclassification problems of unsupervised polarimetric Wishart clas- sification algorithm based on Freeman decomposition, an unsupervised Polarimetric Synthetic Aper- ture Radar （SAR） Interferotnery （PolInSAR） classification algorithm based on optimal coherence set parameters is studied and proposed. This algorithm uses the result of Freeman decomposition to divide the image into three basic categories including surface scattering, volume scattering, and double-bounce Then, the PolInSAR optimal coherence set parameters are used to finely divide each of the three basic categories into 9 categories, and the whole image is divided into 27 categories. Because both the Freeman decomposition result and optimal coherence set parameters indicate specific scattering characteristics, the whole image is merged into 16 categories based on physical meaning. At last, the Wishart cluster is employed to obtain the final classification result. To preserve the purity of scattering characteristics, pixels with similar scattering characteristics are restricted to be classified with other pixels. The final classification results effectively resolve the misclassification problem, not only the buildings can be effectively distinguished from vegetation in urban areas, but also the road is well distinguished from grass. In this paper, the E-SAR PolInSAR data of German Aerospace Center （DLR） are used to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Simulated Annealing for Land Cover Classification in PolSAR Images

Simulated Annealing (SA) is used in this work as a global optimization technique applied in discrete search spaces in order to change the characterization of pixels in a Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) image which have been classified with different label than the surrounding land cover type. Accordingly, Land Cover type classification is achieved with high reliability. For this purpose, an energy function is employed which is minimized by means of SA when the false classified pixels are correctly labeled. All PolSAR pixels are initially classified using 9 specifically selected types of land cover by means of Google Earth maps. Each Land Cover Type is represented by a histogram of the 8 Cameron’s elemental scatterers by means of coherent target decomposition (CTD). Each PolSAR pixel is categorized according to the local histogram of the elemental scatterers. SA is applied in the discreet space of nine land cover types. Classification results prove that the Simulated Annealing approach used is very successful for correctly separating regions with different Land Cover Types.

Fully Polarimetric Land Cover Classification Based on Hidden Markov Models Trained with Multiple Observations

A land cover classification procedure is presented utilizing the information content of fully polarimetric SAR images. The Cameron coherent target decomposition (CTD) is employed to characterize each pixel, using a set of canonical scattering mechanisms in order to describe the physical properties of the scatterer. The novelty of the proposed classification approach lies on the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to uniquely characterize each type of land cover. The motivation to this approach is the investigation of the alternation between scattering mechanisms from SAR pixel to pixel. Depending on the observations-scattering mechanisms and exploiting the transitions between the scattering mechanisms we decide upon the HMM-land cover type. The classification process is based on the likelihood of observation sequences been evaluated by each model. The performance of the classification approach is assessed my means of fully polarimetric SLC SAR data from the broader area of Vancouver, Canada and was found satisfactory, reaching a success from 87% to over 99%.

An approach to estimate tree height using PolInSAR data constructed by the Sentinel-1 dual-pol SAR data and RVoG model

We estimate tree heights using polarimetric interferometric synthetic aperture radar(PolInSAR)data constructed by the dual-polarization(dual-pol)SAR data and random volume over the ground(RVoG)model.Considering the Sentinel-1 SAR dual-pol(SVV,vertically transmitted and vertically received and SVH,vertically transmitted and horizontally received)configuration,one notes that S_(HH),the horizontally transmitted and horizontally received scattering element,is unavailable.The S_(HH)data were constructed using the SVH data,and polarimetric SAR(PolSAR)data were obtained.The proposed approach was first verified in simulation with satisfactory results.It was next applied to construct PolInSAR data by a pair of dual-pol Sentinel-1A data at Duke Forest,North Carolina,USA.According to local observations and forest descriptions,the range of estimated tree heights was overall reasonable.Comparing the heights with the ICESat-2 tree heights at 23 sampling locations,relative errors of 5 points were within±30%.Errors of 8 points ranged from 30%to 40%,but errors of the remaining 10 points were>40%.The results should be encouraged as error reduction is possible.For instance,the construction of PolSAR data should not be limited to using SVH,and a combination of SVH and SVV should be explored.Also,an ensemble of tree heights derived from multiple PolInSAR data can be considered since tree heights do not vary much with time frame in months or one season.

Log-cumulants of the finite mixture model and their application to statistical analysis of fully polarimetric UAVSAR data

Since its first flight in 2007,the UAVSAR instrument of NASA has acquired a large number of fully Polarimetric SAR(PolSAR)data in very high spatial resolution.It is possible to observe small spatial features in this type of data,offering the opportunity to explore structures in the images.In general,the structured scenes would present multimodal or spiky histograms.The finite mixture model has great advantages in modeling data with irregular histograms.In this paper,a type of important statistics called log-cumulants,which could be used to design parameter estimator or goodness-of-fit tests,are derived for the finite mixture model.They are compared with logcumulants of the texture models.The results are adopted to UAVSAR data analysis to determine which model is better for different land types.

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.

Inversion of vegetation height from Pol In SAR using complex least squares adjustment method

In this paper, we propose the novel method of complex least squares adjustment （CLSA） to invert vegetation height accurately using single-baseline polarimetric synthetic aperture radar interferometry （PollnSAR） data. CLSA basically estimates both volume-only coherence and ground phase directly without assuming that the ground-to-volume amplitude radio of a particular polarization channel （e.g., HV） is less than -10 dB, as in the three-stage method. In addition, CLSA can effectively limit errors in interferometric complex coherence, which may translate directly into erroneous ground-phase and volume-only coherence estimations. The proposed CLSA method is validated with BioSAR2008 P-band E-SAR and L-band SIR-C PollnSAR data. Its results are then compared with those of the traditional three-stage method and with external data. It implies that the CLSA method is much more robust than the three-stage method.