Analysis of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar and Passive Visible Light Polarimetric Imaging Data Fusion for Remote Sensing Applications

The recent launch of spaceborne (TerraSAR-X, RADARSAT-2, ALOS-PALSAR, RISAT) and airborne (SIRC, AIRSAR, UAVSAR, PISAR) polarimetric radar sensors, with capability of imaging through day and night in almost all weather conditions, has made polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) image interpretation and analysis an active area of research. PolSAR image classification is sensitive to object orientation and scattering properties. In recent years, significant work has been done in many areas including agriculture, forestry, oceanography, geology, terrain analysis. Visible light passive polarimetric imaging has also emerged as a powerful tool in remote sensing for enhanced information extraction. The intensity image provides information on materials in the scene while polarization measurements capture surface features, roughness, and shading, often uncorrelated with the intensity image. Advantages of visible light polarimetric imaging include high dynamic range of polarimetric signatures and being comparatively straightforward to build and calibrate. This research is about characterization and analysis of the basic scattering mechanisms for information fusion between PolSAR and passive visible light polarimetric imaging. Relationships between these two modes of imaging are established using laboratory measurements and image simulations using the Digital Image and Remote Sensing Image Generation (DIRSIG) tool. A novel low cost laboratory based S-band (2.4GHz) PolSAR instrument is developed that is capable of capturing 4 channel fully polarimetric SAR image data. Simple radar targets are formed and system calibration is performed in terms of radar cross-section. Experimental measurements are done using combination of the PolSAR instrument with visible light polarimetric imager for scenes capturing basic scattering mechanisms for phenomenology studies. The three major scattering mechanisms studied in this research include single, double and multiple bounce. Single bounce occurs from flat surfaces like lakes, rivers, bare soil, and oceans. Double bounce can be observed from two adjacent surfaces where one horizontal flat surface is near a vertical surface such as buildings and other vertical structures. Randomly oriented scatters in homogeneous media produce a multiple bounce scattering effect which occurs in forest canopies and vegetated areas. Relationships between Pauli color components from PolSAR and Degree of Linear Polarization (DOLP) from passive visible light polarimetric imaging are established using real measurements. Results show higher values of the red channel in Pauli color image (|HH-VV|) correspond to high DOLP from double bounce effect. A novel information fusion technique is applied to combine information from the two modes. In this research, it is demonstrated that the Degree of Linear Polarization (DOLP) from passive visible light polarimetric imaging can be used for separation of the classes in terms of scattering mechanisms from the PolSAR data. The separation of these three classes in terms of the scattering mechanisms has its application in the area of land cover classification and anomaly detection. The fusion of information from these particular two modes of imaging, i.e. PolSAR and passive visible light polarimetric imaging, is a largely unexplored area in remote sensing and the main challenge in this research is to identify areas and scenarios where information fusion between the two modes is advantageous for separation of the classes in terms of scattering mechanisms relative to separation achieved with only PolSAR

Pol-InSAR-Island - A benchmark dataset for multi-frequency Pol-InSAR data land cover classification

This paper presents Pol-InSAR-Island, the first publicly available multi-frequency Polarimetric Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (Pol-InSAR) dataset labeled with detailed land cover classes, which serves as a challenging benchmark dataset for land cover classification. In recent years, machine learning has become a powerful tool for remote sensing image analysis. While there are numerous large-scale benchmark datasets for training and evaluating machine learning models for the analysis of optical data, the availability of labeled SAR or, more specifically, Pol-InSAR data is very limited. The lack of labeled data for training, as well as for testing and comparing different approaches, hinders the rapid development of machine learning algorithms for Pol-InSAR image analysis. The Pol-InSAR-Island benchmark dataset presented in this paper aims to fill this gap. The dataset consists of Pol-InSAR data acquired in S- and L-band by DLR\u27s airborne F-SAR system over the East Frisian island Baltrum. The interferometric image pairs are the result of a repeat-pass measurement with a time offset of several minutes. The image data are given as 6 × 6 coherency matrices in ground range on a 1 m × 1m grid. Pixel-accurate class labels, consisting of 12 different land cover classes, are generated in a semi-automatic process based on an existing biotope type map and visual interpretation of SAR and optical images. Fixed training and test subsets are defined to ensure the comparability of different approaches trained and tested prospectively on the Pol-InSAR-Island dataset. In addition to the dataset, results of supervised Wishart and Random Forest classifiers that achieve mean Intersection-over-Union scores between 24% and 67% are provided to serve as a baseline for future work. The dataset is provided via KITopenData: https://doi.org/10.35097/170

Statistical Classification for Heterogeneous Polarimetric SAR Images

International audienceThis paper presents a general approach for high-resolution polarimetric SAR data classification in heterogeneous clutter, based on a statistical test of equality of covariance matrices. The Spherically Invariant Random Vector (SIRV) model is used to describe the clutter. Several distance measures, including classical ones used in standard classification methods, can be derived from the general test. The new approach provide a threshold over which pixels are rejected from the image, meaning they are not sufficiently "close" from any existing class. A distance measure using this general approach is derived and tested on a high-resolution polarimetric data set acquired by the ONERA RAMSES system. It is compared to the results of the classical decomposition and Wishart classifier under Gaussian and SIRV assumption. Results show that the new approach rejects all pixels from heterogeneous parts of the scene and classifies its Gaussian parts

Polarimetric SAR Speckle Noise Model

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are affected by speckle noise, originated by the SAR system's coherent nature. The problem of speckle noise in one-dimensional (1-D) data is already solved, as speckle has a multiplicative characteristic. SAR polarimetry represents an extension to multidimensional data by the use of polarization wave diversity. As a consequence of the existence of a correlation degree between the SAR images, the 1-D speckle noise model cannot be extended to multidimensional SAR data. This paper is devoted to present a completely new speckle noise model for the complex covariance matrix describing polarimetric SAR data in the distributed scatterers case. As is shown, this new model is able to identify which are the noise mechanisms in all the covariance matrix elements. The speckle noise model is validated by using real L-band polarimetric data acquired with the German E-SAR sensor.Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data are affected by speckle noise, originated by the SAR system’s coherent nature. The problem of speckle noise in one-dimensional (1-D) data is already solved, as speckle has a multiplicative characteristic. SAR polarimetry represents an extension to multidimensional data by the use of polarization wave diversity. As a consequence of the existence of a correlation degree between the SAR images, the 1-D speckle noise model cannot be extended to multidimensional SAR data. This paper is devoted to present a completely new speckle noise model for the complex covariance matrix describing polarimetric SAR data in the distributed scatterers case. As will be shown, this new model is able to identify which are the noise mechanisms in all the covariance matrix elements. The speckle noise model is validated by using real L-band polarimetric data acquired with the German E-SAR sensor

Estimation of the normalized coherency matrix through the SIRV model. Application to high resolution POLSAR data

8 pagesInternational audienceIn the context of non-Gaussian polarimetric clutter models, this paper presents an application of the recent advances in the field of Spherically Invariant Random Vectors (SIRV) modelling for coherency matrix estimation in heterogeneous clutter. The complete description of the POLSAR data set is achieved by estimating the span and the normalized coherency independently. The normalized coherency describes the polarimetric diversity, while the span indicates the total received power. The main advantages of the proposed Fixed Point estimator are that it does not require any "a priori" information about the probability density function of the texture (or span) and it can be directly applied on adaptive neighbourhoods. Interesting results are obtained when coupling this Fixed Point estimator with an adaptive spatial support based on the scalar span information. Based on the SIRV model, a new maximum likelihood distance measure is introduced for unsupervised POLSAR classification. The proposed method is tested with airborne POLSAR images provided by the RAMSES system. Results of entropy/alpha/anisotropy decomposition, followed by unsupervised classification, allow discussing the use of the normalized coherency and the span as two separate descriptors of POLSAR data sets

Quad-Polarimetric SAR for Detection and Characterization of Icebergs

Website for ESA Living Planet Symposium 2016.This paper evaluates the performance of fully polarimetric SAR data in iceberg detection and characterization. The study aims to explore the potential of RADARSAT-2 SAR data to detect icebergs and growlers in Svalbard that have broken off from the glaciers nearby. To be able to detect iceberg/growlers in a SAR image, a significant contrast between iceberg and background clutter is required. The sublook cross-correlation magnitude (SCM) is extracted from the complex cross-correlation between subapeture images and contrast between iceberg and sea clutter is measured. The results of target-to-clutter ratio from the SCM indicate that the sublook analysis has an impact on detection performance

Remote Sensing for Non‐Technical Survey

This chapter describes the research activities of the Royal Military Academy on remote sensing applied to mine action. Remote sensing can be used to detect specific features that could lead to the suspicion of the presence, or absence, of mines. Work on the automatic detection of trenches and craters is presented here. Land cover can be extracted and is quite useful to help mine action. We present here a classification method based on Gabor filters. The relief of a region helps analysts to understand where mines could have been laid. Methods to be a digital terrain model from a digital surface model are explained. The special case of multi‐spectral classification is also addressed in this chapter. Discussion about data fusion is also given. Hyper‐spectral data are also addressed with a change detection method. Synthetic aperture radar data and its fusion with optical data have been studied. Radar interferometry and polarimetry are also addressed

Polarimetric Incoherent Target Decomposition by Means of Independent Component Analysis

International audienceThis paper presents an alternative approach for polarimetric incoherent target decomposition dedicated to the analysis of very-high resolution POLSAR images. Given the non-Gaussian nature of the heterogeneous POLSAR clutter due to the increase of spatial resolution, the conventional methods based on the eigenvector target decomposition can ensure uncorrelation of the derived backscattering components at most. By introducing the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in lieu of the eigenvector decomposition, our method is rather deriving statistically independent components. The adopted algorithm - FastICA, uses the non-Gaussianity of the components as the criterion for their independence. Considering the eigenvector decomposition as being analogues to the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we propose the generalization of the ICTD methods to the level of the Blind Source Separation (BSS) techniques (comprising both PCA and ICA). The proposed method preserves the invariance properties of the conventional ones, appearing to be robust both with respect to the rotation around the line of sight and to the change of the polarization basis. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated comparatively, using POLSAR Ramses X-band and ALOS L-band data sets. The main differences with respect to the conventional methods are mostly found in the behaviour of the second most dominant component, which is not necessarily orthogonal to the first one. The potential of retrieving non-orthogonal mechanisms is moreover demonstrated using synthetic data. On expense of a negligible entropy increase, the proposed method is capable of retrieving the edge diffraction of an elementary trihedral by recognizing dipole as the second component