不依赖人工定标器的全极化SAR定标研究进展

极化定标是极化合成孔径雷达应用的前提。传统极化定标方法以地面布设的人工定标器为参考,通过极化畸变模型对系统误差进行求解与标定。然而,人工定标器价格昂贵、数量稀少,每次定标任务都需根据传感器过境方向、雷达视角等信息进行设备调整;此外,现代雷达系统工作波位多、入射角调节范围大,不同视角获取影像的定标参数也不相同,这对地面定标设备的布设精度、调整的时效性提出了更高要求。为了及时、快速地完成极化定标,如何以自然界中的某些特殊地物作为人工定标器的替代品来完成定标具有重大的科学价值。本文综述了近年来国内、外提出的不依赖人工定标器的SAR极化定标研究进展（即自主定标）。首先阐述了极化定标的基本流程与极化质量评价体系;然后对近年来高精度自主定标相关研究进行了梳理,根据技术特点将其分为基于自然地物约束的自主极化定标、基于似角反射器的自主极化定标两类,对不同算法适用性进行了分析;最后对未来的研究方向进行了展望。     

Polarimetric differential SAR interferometry in an arid natural environment

Ground deformation measurements have contributed to a better understanding of the processes and mechanisms involved in natural hazards. Those include landslides, subsidence, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Spaceborne Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture RADAR (DInSAR) is a well studied technique for measuring ground deformation. Quality of deformation measurements, however, is often degraded by decorrelation. With the advent of fully polarimetric SAR satellite sensors, polarimetric optimization techniques exploiting polarimetric diversity improve the phase quality of interferograms. In this paper, we analyzed three polarimetric optimization methods to determine the optimal one for application in an arid natural environment. We considered coherence decomposition in single and double phase center scenarios. Coherence estimation bias associated with each optimization method has been analyzed. We compared the derived displacement values with terrestrial GPS measurements. The study shows that polarimetric optimization increases the number of coherent pixels by upto 6.89% as compared with a single polarization channel. The study concludes that polarimetric optimization coupled with DInSAR analysis yields more reliable deformation results in a low coherence region.     

Object-oriented crop mapping and monitoring using multi-temporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data

The aim of this paper is to assess the accuracy of an object-oriented classification of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data to map and monitor crops using 19 RADARSAT-2 fine beam polarimetric (FQ) images of an agricultural area in North-eastern Ontario, Canada. Polarimetric images and field data were acquired during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. The classification and field data collection focused on the main crop types grown in the region, which include: wheat, oat, soybean, canola and forage. The polarimetric parameters were extracted with PolSAR analysis using both the Cloude–Pottier and Freeman–Durden decompositions. The object-oriented classification, with a single date of PolSAR data, was able to classify all five crop types with an accuracy of 95% and Kappa of 0.93; a 6% improvement in comparison with linear-polarization only classification. However, the time of acquisition is crucial. The larger biomass crops of canola and soybean were most accurately mapped, whereas the identification of oat and wheat were more variable. The multi-temporal data using the Cloude–Pottier decomposition parameters provided the best classification accuracy compared to the linear polarizations and the Freeman–Durden decomposition parameters. In general, the object-oriented classifications were able to accurately map crop types by reducing the noise inherent in the SAR data. Furthermore, using the crop classification maps we were able to monitor crop growth stage based on a trend analysis of the radar response. Based on field data from canola crops, there was a strong relationship between the phenological growth stage based on the BBCH scale, and the HV backscatter and entropy.     

Scattering property based contextual PolSAR speckle filter

Reliability of the scattering model based polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) speckle filter depends upon the accurate decomposition and classification of the scattering mechanisms. This paper presents an improved scattering property based contextual speckle filter based upon an iterative classification of the scattering mechanisms. It applies a Cloude-Pottier eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition and a fuzzy H/α classification to determine the scattering mechanisms on a pre-estimate of the coherency matrix. The H/α classification identifies pixels with homogeneous scattering properties. A coarse pixel selection rule groups pixels that are either single bounce, double bounce or volume scatterers. A fine pixel selection rule is applied to pixels within each canonical scattering mechanism. We filter the PolSAR data and depending on the type of image scene (urban or rural) use either the coarse or fine pixel selection rule. Iterative refinement of the Wishart H/α classification reduces the speckle in the PolSAR data. Effectiveness of this new filter is demonstrated by using both simulated and real PolSAR data. It is compared with the refined Lee filter, the scattering model based filter and the non-local means filter. The study concludes that the proposed filter compares favorably with other polarimetric speckle filters in preserving polarimetric information, point scatterers and subtle features in PolSAR data.     

LSSVM算法在极化SAR影像分类中的应用

最小二乘支持向量机(LSSVM)是针对标准支持向量机(SVM)算法训练时间长的问题而提出的一种改进算法。针对SVM算法在极化SAR影像分类时存在效率较低的问题,以目标分解理论为基础,对LSSVM算法应用于极化SAR影像分类的有效性进行了研究。结果表明,对于极化SAR影像分类,LSSVM算法与SVM算法的分类精度相当,但时间效率远优于SVM算法,并且对参数的调整也具有更好的稳定性,同时泛化能力良好。     

利用SVM的全极化、双极化与单极化SAR图像分类性能的比较

支持向量机(SVM)以其在小训练样本时良好的分类性能,目前已广泛应用于多个领域.本文在极化SAR图像特征提取基础上,将SVM应用于极化SAR图像分类,定性和定量地比较了全极化、双极化和单极化SAR图像的分类性能,分析了不同的极化组合对分类结果的影响,并根据地物极化散射特性分析了分类精度差异的成因.实测极化SAR数据的实验结果表明,全极化数据能获得最好的分类性能,双极化次之,单极化最低,且在某些情况下,双极化与全极化分类性能接近.     

The potential of linear discriminative Laplacian eigenmaps dimensionality reduction in polarimetric SAR classification for agricultural areas

In this paper, the linear discriminative Laplacian eigenmaps (LDLE) dimensionality reduction (DR) algorithm is introduced to C-band polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) agricultural classification. A collection of homogenous areas of the same crop class usually presents physical parameter variation, such as the biomass and soil moisture. Furthermore, the local incidence angle also impacts a lot on the same crop category when the vegetation layer is penetrable with C-band radar. We name this phenomenon as the “observed variation of the same category” (OVSC). The most common PolSAR features, e.g., the Freeman–Durden and Cloude–Pottier decompositions, show an inadequate performance with OVSC. In our research, more than 40 coherent and incoherent PolSAR decomposition models are stacked into the high-dimensionality feature cube to describe the various physical parameters. The LDLE algorithm is then performed on the observed feature cube, with the aim of simultaneously pushing the local samples of the same category closer to each other, as well as maximizing the distance between local samples of different categories in the learnt subspace. Finally, the classification result is obtained by nearest neighbor (NN) or Wishart classification in the reduced feature space. In the simulation experiment, eight crop blocks are picked to generate a test patch from the 1991 Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR) C-band fully polarimetric data from of Flevoland test site. Locality preserving projections (LPP) and principal component analysis (PCA) are then utilized to evaluate the DR results of the proposed method. The classification results show that LDLE can distinguish the influence of the physical parameters and achieve a 99% overall accuracy, which is better than LPP (97%), PCA (88%), NN (89%), and Wishart (88%). In the real data experiment, the Chinese Hailaer nationalized farm RadarSat2 PolSAR test set is used, and the classification accuracy is around 94%, which is again better than LPP (90%), PCA (88%), NN (89%), and Wishart (85%). Both experiments suggest that the LDLE algorithm is an effective way of relieving the OVSC phenomenon.     

A particle swarm optimized kernel-based clustering method for crop mapping from multi-temporal polarimetric L-band SAR observations

Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data, thanks to their specific characteristics such as high resolution, weather and daylight independence, have become a valuable source of information for environment monitoring and management. The discrimination capability of observations acquired by these sensors can be used for land cover classification and mapping. The aim of this paper is to propose an optimized kernel-based C-means clustering algorithm for agriculture crop mapping from multi-temporal PolSAR data. Firstly, several polarimetric features are extracted from preprocessed data. These features are linear polarization intensities, and several statistical and physical based decompositions such as Cloude-Pottier, Freeman-Durden and Yamaguchi techniques. Then, the kernelized version of hard and fuzzy C-means clustering algorithms are applied to these polarimetric features in order to identify crop types. The kernel function, unlike the conventional partitioning clustering algorithms, simplifies the non-spherical and non-linearly patterns of data structure, to be clustered easily. In addition, in order to enhance the results, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used to tune the kernel parameters, cluster centers and to optimize features selection. The efficiency of this method was evaluated by using multi-temporal UAVSAR L-band images acquired over an agricultural area near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, during June and July in 2012. The results demonstrate more accurate crop maps using the proposed method when compared to the classical approaches, (e.g. 12% improvement in general). In addition, when the optimization technique is used, greater improvement is observed in crop classification, e.g. 5% in overall. Furthermore, a strong relationship between Freeman-Durden volume scattering component, which is related to canopy structure, and phenological growth stages is observed.     

利用极化合成孔径雷达干涉测量技术生成DEM

极化合成孔径雷达干涉测量(PolInSAR)是目前雷达遥感的前沿领域之一,它综合了极化和雷达干涉技术(InSAR)的特点.文中应用极化干涉相干最优化技术处理了Amazon雨林地区的真实L波段PALSAR全极化数据,得到该地区的数字高程模型(DEM).与常规的单极化InSAR技术进行对比,证明了利用极化干涉技术可以显著提...     

机载X波段极化干涉SAR数据非监督分类方法研究

针对经典极化分类算法在处理机载X波段SAR数据时将过多地物分为体散射类型,并且容易受噪声影响,分类结果存在大量误分现象的问题,通过对机载X波段SAR数据非监督分类方法的研究,提出将极化干涉信息用于机载X波段极化干涉SAR数据的分类。通过运用极化干涉数据进行目标分解得到参数A1和A2对数据进行初始分类,然后结合改进的Wishart最大似然分类算法来进行地物的自适应分类。实验结果表明,该方法能有效避免平地效应的影响,抗噪性好,能正确区分三种典型散射类型,分类效果明显优于极化分类效果。     

采用螺旋散射的SAR极化定标参考地物提取方法

极化合成孔径雷达观测系统获取的影像需要经过极化定标处理才能进行定量的分析与应用。当前的极化定标方案普遍采用分布式地物解算串扰和交叉极化通道不平衡误差,需要在定标前选取满足一定散射特征的分布式地物作为定标参考样本。利用螺旋散射的极化特征与分布特点,提出了一种新的极化定标参考地物自动提取方法。该方法根据极化目标分解构建螺旋散射比率特征,并采用自适应阈值分割方法自动提取地物样本。采用C波段机载极化雷达影像进行实验,结果表明,所提方法能够保持影像极化定标的准确性,并能提高极化定标的精度。     

综合多特征的极化SAR图像随机森林分类算法

为抑制相干斑噪声对极化SAR图像分类结果的干扰,本文提出一种综合多特征的极化SAR图像随机森林分类方法。该方法首先利用简单线性迭代聚类(SLIC)算法生成超像素作为分类单元;然后,基于高维极化特征图像,利用训练好的随机森林模型,统计决策树的分类投票数,计算各超像素的类别概率;最后,利用超像素间的空间邻域特征,采用概率松弛算法(PLR)迭代修正超像素的类别后验概率,并依据最大后验概率(MAP)准则得到分类结果;实现综合利用超像素和空间邻域特征,降低相干斑噪声干扰的极化SAR图像分类方法。实验对比结果表明:本文方法能得有效抑制极化SAR图像中相干斑噪声的干扰,得到高精度且光滑连续的分类结果。     

Implementation of RISAT-1 Hybrid Polarimetric Decomposition Techniques and Analysis Using Corner Reflector Data

With recent advances in polarimetry, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) with Hybrid–polarity architecture, a demonstration of compact polarimetry enabled larger swath coverage, reduced PRF and SAR system complexity as compared to fully polarimetric systems. The first Hybrid Polarimetric Space-borne SAR in Earth Observation orbit, India’s Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-1) is a new-fangled gateway to remote sensing user community for land and oceanic applications. In response to a right-circular polarized transmitted signal, based on the derived stokes vectors, Stokes parameters are estimated to produce several useful quantitative measures for generating polarimetric decomposed image. m-delta, m-chi and m-alpha polarimetric decomposition methods along with suitable weighting functions in terms of three principal components are implemented which maps Stokes parameters to RGB image space for representing odd bounce, even bounce and volume scattering targets. Various RISAT-1 Hybrid Fine Resolution Stripmap Single-Look Complex SAR datasets acquired over deployed corner reflectors at calibration site, Shadnagar have been considered over which different hybrid polarimetric decomposition techniques are implemented using in-house developed software. Further analysis produced encouraging results with standard point targets like dihedral and trihedral corner reflectors against distributed targets in the same scene to demonstrate the scattering mechanisms as per their characteristics when interacted with a polarized signal were presented in this paper.     

A new Likelihood Ratio for supervised classification of fully polarimetric SAR data: An application for sea ice type mapping

One of the potential applications of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data is the classification of land cover, such as forest canopies, vegetation, sea ice types, and urban areas. In contrast to single or dual polarized SAR systems, full polarimetric SAR systems provide more information about the physical and geometrical properties of the imaged area. This paper proposes a new Bayes risk function which can be minimized to obtain a Likelihood Ratio (LR) for the supervised classification of polarimetric SAR data. The derived Bayes risk function is based on the complex Wishart distribution. Furthermore, a new spatial criterion is incorporated with the LR classification process to produce more homogeneous classes. The application for Arctic sea ice mapping shows that the LR and the proposed spatial criterion are able to provide promising classification results. Comparison with classification results based on the Wishart classifier, the Wishart Likelihood Ratio Test Statistic (WLRTS) proposed by Conradsen et al. (2003) and the Expectation Maximization with Probabilistic Label Relaxation (EMPLR) algorithm are presented. High overall classification accuracy of selected study areas which reaches 97.8% using the LR is obtained. Combining the derived spatial criterion with the LR can improve the overall classification accuracy to reach 99.9%. In this study, fully polarimetric C-band RADARSAT-2 data collected over Franklin Bay, Canadian Arctic, is used.     

基于Freeman散射熵和各向异性度的极化SAR影像分类算法研究

极化SAR影像中阴影、水体和裸露的耕地3种地物类型有非常相似的极化散射特性,常规基于非相干分解的分类方法难以将其有效地区分。对此,本文引入基于Freeman分解的散射熵Hf和各向异性度Af两个特征参数,并将其用于极化SAR影像分类。首先利用Hf和Af参数将阴影和水体提取出来,然后将其他地物按散射机制分为3大类,并对每一类再次利用Hf和Af参数进行细分,最后通过基于Wishart分布的聚类和迭代分类,得到最终的分类结果。通过利用Radarsat-2在河南登封获取的全极化SAR数据进行试验,表明该算法执行效率高,能够有效地区分阴影、水体和裸露的耕地,并且对其他地物类型也有很好的分类效果。     

全极化雷达遥感影像的迭代优化非局部均值去噪法

相干斑的存在严重降低了全极化合成孔径雷达(polarimetric synthetic aperture radar,PolSAR)的影像质量,对相干斑进行抑制是使用PolSAR数据必不可少的预处理程序。本文提出了一种迭代优化的PolSAR非局部均值去噪方法。该方法在每次迭代去噪过程中,通过同时考虑原始影像全极化噪声统计特性和前一次迭代所得影像的全极化信息来完善像素间极化相似性的度量,从而实现对影像更精准的估计。试验部分利用模拟的PolSAR数据和真实的PolSAR影像进行了算法效果的验证。结果表明:去噪算法在显著抑制影像噪声水平的同时,也能较好地保持影像的边缘和极化特性等细节信息。     

Crop classification from full-year fully-polarimetric L-band UAVSAR time-series using the Random Forest algorithm

Accurate and timely information on the distribution of crop types is vital to agricultural management, ecosystem services valuation and food security assessment. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems have become increasingly popular in the field of crop monitoring and classification. However, the potential of time-series polarimetric SAR data has not been explored extensively, with several open scientific questions (e.g. the optimal combination of image dates for crop classification) that need to be answered. In this research, the usefulness of full year (both 2011 and 2014) L-band fully-polarimetric Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) data in crop classification was fully investigated over an agricultural region with a heterogeneous distribution of crop categories. In total, 11 crop classes including tree crops (almond and walnut), forage crops (grass, alfalfa, hay, and clover), a spring crop (winter wheat), and summer crops (corn, sunflower, tomato, and pepper), were discriminated using the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. The SAR input variables included raw linear polarization channels as well as polarimetric parameters derived from Cloude-Pottier (CP) and Freeman-Durden (FD) decompositions. Results showed clearly that the polarimetric parameters yielded much higher classification accuracies than linear polarizations. The combined use of all variables (linear polarizations and polarimetric parameters) produced the maximum overall accuracy of 90.50 % and 84.93 % for 2011 and 2014, respectively, with a significant increase of approximately 8 percentage points compared with linear polarizations alone. The variable importance provided by the RF illustrated that the polarimetric parameters had a far greater influence than linear polarizations, with the CP parameters being much more important than the FD parameters. The most important acquisitions were the images dated during the peak biomass stage (July and August) when the differences in structural characteristics between most crops were the largest. At the same time, the images in spring (April and May) and autumn (October) also contributed to the crop classification since they respectively provided unique information for discriminating fruit crops (almond and walnut) as well as summer crops (corn, sunflower, and tomato). As a result, the combined use of only four acquisitions (dated May, July, August, and October for 2011 and April, June, August, and October for 2014) was adequate to achieve a nearly-optimal overall accuracy. In light of the promising classification accuracies demonstrated in this research, it becomes increasingly viable to provide accurate and up-to-date crops inventories over large areas based solely on multitemporal polarimetric SAR.     

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar change detection for specific land cover types

This paper presents a supervised polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) change detection method applied to specific land cover types. For each pixel of a PolSAR image, its target scattering vector can be modeled as having a complex multivariate normal distribution. Based on this assumption, the joint distribution of two corresponding vectors in a pair of PolSAR images is derived. Then, a generalized likelihood ratio test statistic for the equality of two likelihood functions of such joint distribution is considered and a maximum likelihood distance measure for specific land cover types is presented. Subsequently, the Kittler and Illingworth minimum error threshold segmentation method is applied to extract the specific changed areas. Experiments on two repeat-pass Radarsat-2 fully polarimetric images of Suzhou, China, demonstrate that the proposed change detection method gives a good performance in determining the specific changed areas in PolSAR images, especially the areas that have changed to water.     

Multiple-Component Scattering Model for Polarimetric SAR Image Decomposition

A multiple-component scattering model (MCSM) is proposed to decompose polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images. The MCSM extends a three-component scattering model, which describes single-bounce, double-bounce, volume, helix, and wire scattering as elementary scattering mechanisms in the analysis of PolSAR images. It can be found that double-bounce, helix, and wire scattering are predominant in urban areas. These elementary scattering mechanisms correspond to the asymmetric reflection condition that the copolar and cross-polar correlations are not close to zero. The MCSM is demonstrated with a German Aerospace Center (DLR) Experimental Synthetic Aperture Radar (ESAR) L-band full-polarized image of the Oberpfaffenhofen Test Site Area (DE), Germany, which was obtained on September 30, 2000. The result of this decomposition confirmed that the proposed model is effective for analysis of buildings in urban areas.      

Water-Body types identification in urban areas from radarsat-2 fully polarimetric SAR data

This paper presents a novel method for supervised water-body extraction and water-body types identification from Radarsat-2 fully polarimetric (FP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in complex urban areas. First, supervised water-body extraction using the Wishart classifier is performed, and the false alarms that are formed in built-up areas are removed using morphological processing methods and spatial contextual information. Then, the support vector machine (SVM), the classification and regression tree (CART), TreeBagger (TB), and random forest (RF) classifiers are introduced for water-body types (rivers, lakes, ponds) identification. In SAR images, certain other objects that are misclassified as water are also considered in water-body types identification. Several shape and polarimetric features of each candidate water-body are used for identification. Radarsat-2 PolSAR data that were acquired over Suzhou city and Dongguan city in China are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the experimental results are evaluated at both the object and pixel levels. We compared the water-body types classification results using only shape features and the combination of shape and polarimetric features, the experimental results show that the polarimetric features can eliminate the misclassifications from certain other objects like roads to water areas, and the increasement of classification accuracy embodies at both the object and pixel levels. The experimental results show that the proposed methods can achieve satisfactory accuracies at the object level [89.4% (Suzhou), 95.53% (Dongguan)] and the pixel level [96.22% (Suzhou), 97.95% (Dongguan)] for water-body types classification, respectively.