Modulated-ISRJ rejection using online dictionary learning for synthetic aperture radar imagery

In electromagnetic countermeasures circumstances,synthetic aperture radar(SAR)imagery usually suffers from severe quality degradation from modulated interrupt sampling repeater jamming(MISRJ),which usually owes considerable coherence with the SAR transmission waveform together with periodical modulation patterns.This paper develops an MISRJ suppression algorithm for SAR imagery with online dictionary learning.In the algorithm,the jamming modulation temporal properties are exploited with extracting and sorting MISRJ slices using fast-time autocorrelation.Online dictionary learning is followed to separate real signals from jamming slices.Under the learned representation,time-varying MISRJs are suppressed effectively.Both simulated and real-measured SAR data are also used to confirm advantages in suppressing time-varying MISRJs over traditional methods.

Power of SAR Imagery and Machine Learning in Monitoring Ulva prolifera:A Case Study of Sentinel-1 and Random Forest

Automatically detecting Ulva prolifera(U.prolifera)in rainy and cloudy weather using remote sensing imagery has been a long-standing problem.Here,we address this challenge by combining high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)imagery with the machine learning,and detect the U.prolifera of the South Yellow Sea of China(SYS)in 2021.The findings indicate that the Random Forest model can accurately and robustly detect U.prolifera,even in the presence of complex ocean backgrounds and speckle noise.Visual inspection confirmed that the method successfully identified the majority of pixels containing U.prolifera without misidentify-ing noise pixels or seawater pixels as U.prolifera.Additionally,the method demonstrated consistent performance across different im-ages,with an average Area Under Curve(AUC)of 0.930(+0.028).The analysis yielded an overall accuracy of over 96%,with an aver-age Kappa coefficient of 0.941(+0.038).Compared to the traditional thresholding method,Random Forest model has a lower estima-tion error of 14.81%.Practical application indicates that this method can be used in the detection of unprecedented U.prolifera in 2021 to derive continuous spatiotemporal changes.This study provides a potential new method to detect U.prolifera and enhances our under-standing of macroalgal outbreaks in the marine environment.

Novel method for extraction of ship target with overlaps in SAR image via EM algorithm

The quality of synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image degrades in the case of multiple imaging projection planes(IPPs)and multiple overlapping ship targets,and then the performance of target classification and recognition can be influenced.For addressing this issue,a method for extracting ship targets with overlaps via the expectation maximization(EM)algorithm is pro-posed.First,the scatterers of ship targets are obtained via the target detection technique.Then,the EM algorithm is applied to extract the scatterers of a single ship target with a single IPP.Afterwards,a novel image amplitude estimation approach is pro-posed,with which the radar image of a single target with a sin-gle IPP can be generated.The proposed method can accom-plish IPP selection and targets separation in the image domain,which can improve the image quality and reserve the target information most possibly.Results of simulated and real mea-sured data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Strip segmentation of oceanic internal waves in SAR images based on TransUNet

The development of oceanic remote sensing artificial intelligence has made possible to obtain valuable information from amounts of massive data.Oceanic internal waves play a crucial role in oceanic activity.To obtain oceanic internal wave stripes from synthetic aperture radar(SAR)images,a stripe segmentation algorithm is proposed based on the TransUNet framework,which is a combination of U-Net and Transformer,which is also optimized.Through adjusting the number of Transformer layer,multi-layer perceptron(MLP)channel,and Dropout parameters,the influence of over-fitting on accuracy is significantly weakened,which is more conducive to segmenting lightweight oceanic internal waves.The results show that the optimized algorithm can accurately segment oceanic internal wave stripes.Moreover,the optimized algorithm can be trained on a microcomputer,thus reducing the research threshold.The proposed algorithm can also change the complexity of the model to adapt it to different date scales.Therefore,TransUNet has immense potential for segmenting oceanic internal waves.

Rapid detection to long ship wake in synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery

The maritime administrative department employs synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite remote sensing technology to obtain evidence of illegal discharge of ships. If the ship is discharged during navigation, it forms a long dark wake on the SAR image due to the suppression of the Bragg wave by the oil fi lm. This study investigates key techniques for rapid detection of long ship wakes, thereby providing law enforcement agencies with candidate ships for possible discharge. This paper presents a rapid long ship wake detection method that uses satellite imaging parameters and the axial direction of the ship in images to determine the potential detection area of the wake. Then, the threshold of long ship wake detection is determined using statistical analysis, the area is binarized, and isolated points are removed using a morphological filter operator. The method was tested with ENVISAT Synthetic Aperture Radar and GF-3 SAR data, and results showed that the method was eff ective, and the overall accuracy of the decision reaches 71%. We present two innovations;one is a method that draws a Doppler shift curve, and uses the SAR imaging parameters to determine the detection area of the long wake to achieve rapid detection and reduce the image detection area. The other is where a classical linear fitting method is used to quickly and accurately determine whether the detected dark area is a long ship wake and realizes the twisted long ship wake detection caused by the sea surface flow field, which is otherwise diffi cult to detect by the traditional Radon and Hough transform methods. This method has good suppression performance for the dark spot false alarm formed by low speed wind region or upward flow. The method is developed for maritime ship monitoring system and will promote the operational application of maritime ship monitoring system.

Monitoring cyanobacteria-dominant algal blooms in eutrophicated Taihu Lake in China with synthetic aperture radar images

Monitoring algal blooms by optical remote sensing is limited by cloud cover.In this study,synthetic aperture radar(SAR) was deployed with the aim of monitoring cyanobacteria-dominant algal blooms in Taihu Lake in cloudy weather.The study shows that dark regions in the SAR images caused by cyanobacterial blooms damped the microwave backscatter of the lake surface and were consistent with the regions of algal blooms in quasi-synchronous optical images,confirming the applicability of SAR for detection of surface blooms.Low backscatter may also be associated with other factors such as low wind speeds,resulting in interference when monitoring algal blooms using SAR data alone.After feature extraction and selection,the dark regions were classified by the support vector machine method with an overall accuracy of 67.74%.SAR can provide a reference point for monitoring cyanobacterial blooms in the lake,particularly when weather is not suitable for optical remote sensing.Multi-polarization and multi-band SAR can be considered for use in the future to obtain more accurate information regarding algal blooms from SAR data.

Method of moving target detection based on sub-image cancellation for single-antenna airborne synthetic aperture radar

The method of moving target detection based on subimage cancellation for single-antenna airborne SAR is presented. First the subimage is obtained through frequency processing is pointed out. The imaging difference of a stationary objects and moving object in the subimage based on the frequency division is analyzed from the fundamental principle. Then the developed method combines the shear averaging algorithm to focus on the moving target in the subimage, after the clutter suppression and the focusing position in each subimage is obtained. Next the observation model and the relative movement of the moving targets between the subimages estimate the moving targets. The theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the method is effective and can not only detect the moving targets, but also estimate their motion parameters precisely.

A novel oil spill detection method from synthetic aperture radar imageries via a bidimensional empirical mode decomposition

Oil spills pose a major threat to ocean ecosystems and their health. Synthetic aperture radar（SAR） sensors can detect oil spills on the sea surface. These oil spills appear as dark spots in SAR images. However, dark formations can be caused by a number of phenomena. It is aimed to distinguishing oil spills or look-alike objects. A novel method based on a bidimensional empirical mode decomposition is proposed. The selected dark formations are first decomposed into several bidimensional intrinsic mode functions and the residue. Subsequently, 64 dimension feature sets are calculated using the Hilbert spectral analysis and five new features are extracted with a relief algorithm. Mahalanobis distances are then used for classification. Three data sets containing oil spills or look-alikes are used to test the accuracy rate of the method. The accuracy rate is more than 90%. The experimental results demonstrate that the novel method can detect oil spills validly and accurately.

Simulation of Raw Signal for Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)

The study on simulation of raw signal for spaceborne SAR aims at producing raw signal to test and evaluate the system and imaging algorithm. The model used for simulation includes a distributed target model, a platform and target geometry model, and a mathematical architecture used for generation of raw echo. Two aspects are stressed, one is the effects of earth ellip soid and attitude errors on radar impulse respense, the other is quick generation of range migration in azimuth frequency domain. Prescribed statistical characteristics of the model account for a realistic speckle of actual image. Finally, examples are given to validate the simulation of raw signal for spaceborne SAR.

An Information Theory Approach to the Data Compression and Imaging System for Synthetic Aperture Radar （SAR）

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is portrayed as a multiple access channel. An information theory approach is applied to the SAR imaging system, and the information content about a target that can be extracted from its radar image is evaluated by the average mutual information measure. A conditional (transition) probability density function (PDF) of the SAR imaging system is derived by analyzing the system and a closed form of the information content is found. It is shown that the information content obtained by the SAR imaging system from an independent sample of echoes will decrease and the total information content obtained by the SAR imaging system will increase with an increase in the number of looks. Because the total average mutual information is also used to define a measure of radiometric resolution for radar images, it is shown that the radiometric resolution of a radar image of terrain will be improved by spatial averaging. In addition, the imaging process and the data compression process for SAR are each treated as an independent generalized communication channel. The effects of data compression upon radiometric resolution for SAR are studied and some conclusions are obtained.

Carbon stock estimation by dual-polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and forest inventory data in a Mediterranean forest landscape

Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in mitigating global climate change by forming massive carbon sinks. Their carbon stocks and stock changes need to be quantified for carbon budget balancing and international reporting schemes. However, direct sampling and biomass weighing may not always be possible for quantification studies conducted in large forests. In these cases, indirect methods that use forest inventory information combined with remote sensing data can be beneficial. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images offer numerous opportunities to researchers as freely distributed remote sensing data. This study aims to estimate the amount of total carbon stock (TCS) in forested lands of the Kizildag Forest Enterprise. To this end, the actual storage capacities of five carbon pools, i.e. above- and below-ground, deadwood, litter, and soil, were calculated using the indirect method based on ground measurements of 264 forest inventory plots. They were then associated with the backscattered values from Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 data in a Geographical Information System (GIS). Finally, TCS was separately modelled and mapped. The best regression model was developed using the HH polarization of ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 with an adjusted R^(2) of 0.78 (p < 0.05). According to the model, the estimated TCS was about 2 Mt for the entire forest, with an average carbon storage of 133 t ha^(−1). The map showed that the distribution of TCS was heterogenic across the study area. Carbon hotspots were mostly composed of pure stands of Anatolian black pine and mixed, over-mature stands of Lebanese cedar and Taurus fir. It was concluded that the total carbon stocks of forest ecosystems could be estimated using appropriate SAR images at acceptable accuracy levels for forestry purposes. The use of additional ancillary data may provide more delicate and reliable estimations in the future. Given the implications of this study, the spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon can be effectively controlled by forest management when coupled with easily accessible space-borne radar data.

WATERMARKING WITH REFINED PERCEPTUAL MASKING TUNED FOR SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR IMAGES

A watermarking scheme designed for remote sensing images needs to meet the same demand of both invisibility as for ordinary digital images. Due to specific perceptual characteristics of Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) images, the watermarking algorithms with consideration of Human Vision System(HVS) modeling from optical images give poor performance when applied on SAR images. This paper examines a variety of factors affecting the noise sensitivity, and further proposes a refined pixel-wise masking approach for watermarking on SAR images. The proposed approach is applied on logarithmic transformed SAR images, and has increased the acceptable watermark embedding strength by about 6 dB to 10 dB while achieving the same levels of watermarked image visual quality. Experimental results show that this approach enhanced the perceptual invisibility of watermarking based on wavelet decomposition.

星载SAR在轨成像高效处理系统硬件实现设计

星载合成孔径雷达(Synthetic Aperture Radar,SAR)在轨成像技术是灾害检测、军事侦察等高时效遥感应用场景的关键手段,以现场可编程门阵列(Field-Programmable Gate Array,FPGA)+数字信号处理器(Digital Signal Processing/Processor,DSP)为处理核心是一种搭建星载SAR在轨成像系统的典型方案,在异构算力、能效比、灵活度等方面综合评价良好。但现有的FPGA+DSP系统在算法支持、大粒度处理、片上并行加速、复杂矩阵转置方面仍研究不足,成像性能仍然有较大提升空间。本文对支持大斜视、高分辨成像的非线性调频变标算法(Nonlinear Chirp Scaling Algorithm,NCS)算法进行分析,根据运算复杂度和类型将算法划分为主流程和辅助路程,以此为依据提出NCS算法在FPGA+DSP系统中的异构映射方案;针对多通道快速傅里叶变换(Fast Fourier Transform,FFT)处理后数据存储形式发生变换、难以流水处理的问题,提出基于时频抽取切换的多通道FFT协同处理方法,保证多通道FFT处理高效进行;针对不同粒度、不同并行度场景下转置需求复杂多变的问题,提出基于X-直接存储器访问(X-Direct Memory Access,XDMA)+片上分割转置的通用交叉转置方案。本文采用2片VX690T FPGA和2片FT6678 DSP为核心处理器研制了星载SAR成像板卡,实现了提出的系统设计方案。同时,本文搭建了基于模拟源+地检的验证环境,对条带/扫描/聚束/滑聚/TOPS模式的仿真点阵数据和条带/滑聚模式的实测数据进行处理。点阵数据的二维峰值旁瓣比约为-13.2 dB,二维积分旁瓣比约为-10.1 dB,成像质量良好;以条带模式为例,图像尺寸为32K×16K,基于NCS算法的平均成像时间为7.81 s,成像速度较现有方案大幅提升。

微波视觉与SAR图像智能解译

高分辨率雷达成像技术和人工智能、大数据技术的快速发展,有力促进了雷达图像智能解译技术的进步。由于雷达传感器本身的特殊性和电磁散射成像物理的复杂性,雷达图像的解译缺乏光学图像的直观性,准确迅速识别分类的需求对雷达图像解译提出了迫切的挑战。在借鉴人脑光视觉感知机理和计算机视觉图像处理相关技术基础上,进一步融合电磁散射物理规律及其雷达成像机理,我们提出发展微波域雷达图像解译的“微波视觉”的新交叉领域研究。该文介绍微波视觉的概念与内涵,提出微波视觉认知模型,阐述其基础理论问题与技术路线,最后介绍了作者团队在相关问题上的初步研究进展。

方位向调制干扰对高分宽幅多通道SAR的影响

多通道合成孔径雷达(synthetic aperture radar,SAR)能够利用方位向多通道重构处理去除多普勒模糊,获得高分宽幅SAR图像。针对此特殊的多通道重构处理方式,研究了传统SAR方位向调制干扰对高分宽幅多通道SAR的影响,包括多普勒调制干扰和脉冲延迟转发干扰两种类型的方位向调制干扰方式,为高分宽幅多通道SAR干扰决策提供理论基础。理论分析指出,多普勒调制干扰信号经成像处理后将在方位向生成等间隔分布的虚假目标,并且幅度受与多普勒调制频率相关的正弦函数和匹配滤波损失联合调制;而脉冲延迟转发干扰信号在成像后将只有单个干扰目标出现,且目标的方位位置仅与延迟的脉冲数有关。仿真实验验证了理论分析的正确性。

基于噪声卷积调制的SAR多区域灵巧干扰方法

针对传统噪声卷积干扰存在的压制区域位置在方位向上不能灵活控制的缺陷,提出一种基于噪声卷积调制的SAR多区域灵巧干扰方法。该方法对截获信号进行距离向移频、方位向移相以及与噪声模板的卷积调制处理,以控制压制区域的位置;后对截获信号进行不同频率、相位的噪声卷积调制处理,以控制压制区域的数量。理论和仿真结果表明,所提方法实现了压制区域位置在方位向、距离向上的灵活控制,并实现了单一干扰机对多个待掩护区域的干扰,提高了干扰增益,干扰效果较好,对实际工程应用具有一定的参考价值。

基于复合正则化的稀疏SAR成像方法研究

随着高分辨率对地观测要求的不断提高,合成孔径雷达(Synthetic Aperture Radar,SAR)的应用将越来越广泛。针对高分辨率SAR成像存在数据量大、存储难度高、计算时间长等问题,目前常用的解决方法是在SAR成像模型中引入压缩感知(Compressed Sensing,CS)的方法降低采样率和数据量。通常使用单一的正则化作为约束条件,可以抑制点目标旁瓣,实现点目标特征增强,但是观测场景中可能存在多种目标类型,因此使用单一正则化约束难以满足多种特征增强的要求。本文提出了一种基于复合正则化的稀疏高分辨SAR成像方法,通过压缩感知降低数据量,并使用多种正则化的线性组合作为约束条件,增强观测场景中不同类型目标的特征,实现复杂场景中高分辨率对地观测的要求。该方法在稀疏SAR成像模型中引入非凸正则化和全变分(Total Variation,TV)正则化作为约束条件,减小稀疏重构误差、增强区域目标的特征,降低噪声对成像结果的影响,提高成像质量;采用改进的交替方向乘子法(Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers,ADMM)实现复合正则化约束的求解,减少计算时间、快速重构图像;使用方位距离解耦算子代替观测矩阵及其共轭转置,进一步降低计算复杂度。仿真和实测数据实验表明,本文所提算法可以对点目标和区域目标进行特征增强,减小计算复杂度,提高收敛性能,实现快速高分辨的图像重构。

多域特征引导的无监督SAR图像舰船检测方法

如何在合成孔径雷达(SAR)图像标注样本有限的条件下,提升舰船检测性能一直是SAR图像处理中的热点问题。本文提出一种多域特征引导的无监督域适应方法,将知识从有标注的源域(光学图像)转移到未标注的目标域(SAR图像),降低对标记SAR图像数据依赖。同时,设计了频域转换模块、注意力区域增强模块和自适应权重模块来缩小光学、SAR图像域之间的域差距,提高源域与目标域特征对齐效率,增强网络在挑战性样本下的特征迁移能力。在公开发布的数据集上进行了大量实验。结果表明:所提的模块较基础模型AP50提升10%,总体性能优于其他先进的方法。

基于相位补偿核的GNSS-SAR改进后向投影成像算法

在利用全球导航卫星系统反射信号(GNSS-R)的无源合成孔径雷达体制中,目前常采用后向投影算法进行成像处理,但该算法逐点精确聚焦的处理过程使得算法的运算量大。针对上述问题,提出了一种数据分块和构造相位补偿核的改进后向投影算法。改进算法对回波矩阵进行分块,将目标区域成像网格点的最长延迟距离与最短延迟距离等间隔划分,建立相位补偿核,通过距离向搜索操作得到各网格点的相位补偿结果,在方位向相干叠加形成子图,递归合并得到最终图像。定量分析得出,改进算法可有效降低运算量,同时节省内存。仿真结果验证了所提算法的有效性。

机载SAR受空/地转发干扰识别特征研究

鉴于当前还未有关于合成孔径雷达(SAR)受到空中机动平台产生的间歇采样转发干扰问题的相关研究,针对机载SAR受到来自空中机动/地面固定两类平台的间歇采样转发干扰的识别特征进行研究.首先推导了两类转发干扰的信号模型,从理论上对两类转发干扰的识别特征进行多域联合分析;然后采用基于WVD分布的时频分析方法和基于ω-K的SAR成像算法,从受干扰信号的时域、频域、时频域和图像域等四个维度对两种干扰样式进行了仿真和分析.仿真结果验证了理论分析的正确性,从而为机载SAR遭遇转发干扰时的样式识别提供了可靠的分析思路和识别依据,并进一步给出针对两类转发干扰的反制策略.