Change detection in SAR time-series based on the coefficient of variation

This paper discusses change detection in SAR time-series. Firstly, several statistical properties of the coefficient of variation highlight its pertinence for change detection. Then several criteria are proposed. The coefficient of variation is suggested to detect any kind of change. Then other criteria based on ratios of coefficients of variations are proposed to detect long events such as construction test sites, or point-event such as vehicles. These detection methods are evaluated first on theoretical statistical simulations to determine the scenarios where they can deliver the best results. Then detection performance is assessed on real data for different types of scenes and sensors (Sentinel-1, UAVSAR). In particular, a quantitative evaluation is performed with a comparison of our solutions with state-of-the-art methods

Accuracy Analysis Comparison of Supervised Classification Methods for Anomaly Detection on Levees Using SAR Imagery

This paper analyzes the use of a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery to support levee condition assessment by detecting potential slide areas in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Levees are prone to a failure in the form of internal erosion within the earthen structure and landslides (also called slough or slump slides). If not repaired, slough slides may lead to levee failures. In this paper, we compare the accuracy of the supervised classification methods minimum distance (MD) using Euclidean and Mahalanobis distance, support vector machine (SVM), and maximum likelihood (ML), using SAR technology to detect slough slides on earthen levees. In this work, the effectiveness of the algorithms was demonstrated using quad-polarimetric L-band SAR imagery from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL’s) uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR). The study area is a section of the lower Mississippi River valley in the Southern USA, where earthen flood control levees are maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers

Remote sensing of Earth terrain

Remote sensing of earth terrain is examined. The layered random medium model is used to investigate the fully polarimetric scattering of electromagnetic waves from vegetation. The model is used to interpret the measured data for vegetation fields such as rice, wheat, or soybean over water or soil. Accurate calibration of polarimetric radar systems is essential for the polarimetric remote sensing of earth terrain. A polarimetric calibration algorithm using three arbitrary in-scene reflectors is developed. In the interpretation of active and passive microwave remote sensing data from the earth terrain, the random medium model was shown to be quite successful. A multivariate K-distribution is proposed to model the statistics of fully polarimetric radar returns from earth terrain. In the terrain cover classification using the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, the applications of the K-distribution model will provide better performance than the conventional Gaussian classifiers. The layered random medium model is used to study the polarimetric response of sea ice. Supervised and unsupervised classification procedures are also developed and applied to synthetic aperture radar polarimetric images in order to identify their various earth terrain components for more than two classes. These classification procedures were applied to San Francisco Bay and Traverse City SAR images

Levee Slide Detection using Synthetic Aperture Radar Magnitude and Phase

The objectives of this research are to support the development of state-of-the-art methods using remotely sensed data to detect slides or anomalies in an efficient and cost-effective manner based on the use of SAR technology. Slough or slump slides are slope failures along a levee, which leave areas of the levee vulnerable to seepage and failure during high water events. This work investigates the facility of detecting the slough slides on an earthen levee with different types of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (polSAR) imagery. The source SAR imagery is fully quad-polarimetric L-band data from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL’s) Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). The study area encompasses a portion of the levees of the lower Mississippi river, located in Mississippi, United States. The obtained classification results reveal that the polSAR data unsupervised classification with features extraction produces more appropriate results than the unsupervised classification with no features extraction. Obviously, supervised classification methods provide better classification results compared to the unsupervised methods. The anomaly identification is good with these results and was improved with the use of a majority filter. The classification accuracy is further improved with a morphology filter. The classification accuracy is significantly improved with the use of GLCM features. The classification results obtained for all three cases (magnitude, phase, and complex data), with classification accuracies for the complex data being higher, indicate that the use of synthetic aperture radar in combination with remote sensing imagery can effectively detect anomalies or slides on an earthen levee. For all the three samples it consistently shows that the accuracies for the complex data are higher when compared to those from the magnitude and phase data alone. The tests comparing complex data features to magnitude and phase data alone, and full complex data, and use of post-processing filter, all had very high accuracy. Hence we included more test samples to validate and distinguish results

A Comprehensive Survey of Deep Learning in Remote Sensing: Theories, Tools and Challenges for the Community

In recent years, deep learning (DL), a re-branding of neural networks (NNs), has risen to the top in numerous areas, namely computer vision (CV), speech recognition, natural language processing, etc. Whereas remote sensing (RS) possesses a number of unique challenges, primarily related to sensors and applications, inevitably RS draws from many of the same theories as CV; e.g., statistics, fusion, and machine learning, to name a few. This means that the RS community should be aware of, if not at the leading edge of, of advancements like DL. Herein, we provide the most comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art RS DL research. We also review recent new developments in the DL field that can be used in DL for RS. Namely, we focus on theories, tools and challenges for the RS community. Specifically, we focus on unsolved challenges and opportunities as it relates to (i) inadequate data sets, (ii) human-understandable solutions for modelling physical phenomena, (iii) Big Data, (iv) non-traditional heterogeneous data sources, (v) DL architectures and learning algorithms for spectral, spatial and temporal data, (vi) transfer learning, (vii) an improved theoretical understanding of DL systems, (viii) high barriers to entry, and (ix) training and optimizing the DL.Comment: 64 pages, 411 references. To appear in Journal of Applied Remote Sensin

Deep learning in remote sensing: a review

Standing at the paradigm shift towards data-intensive science, machine learning techniques are becoming increasingly important. In particular, as a major breakthrough in the field, deep learning has proven as an extremely powerful tool in many fields. Shall we embrace deep learning as the key to all? Or, should we resist a 'black-box' solution? There are controversial opinions in the remote sensing community. In this article, we analyze the challenges of using deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, review the recent advances, and provide resources to make deep learning in remote sensing ridiculously simple to start with. More importantly, we advocate remote sensing scientists to bring their expertise into deep learning, and use it as an implicit general model to tackle unprecedented large-scale influential challenges, such as climate change and urbanization.Comment: Accepted for publication IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazin

Remote sensing of earth terrain

In remote sensing, the encountered geophysical media such as agricultural canopy, forest, snow, or ice are inhomogeneous and contain scatters in a random manner. Furthermore, weather conditions such as fog, mist, or snow cover can intervene the electromagnetic observation of the remotely sensed media. In the modelling of such media accounting for the weather effects, a multi-layer random medium model has been developed. The scattering effects of the random media are described by three-dimensional correlation functions with variances and correlation lengths corresponding to the fluctuation strengths and the physical geometry of the inhomogeneities, respectively. With proper consideration of the dyadic Green's function and its singularities, the strong fluctuation theory is used to calculate the effective permittivities which account for the modification of the wave speed and attenuation in the presence of the scatters. The distorted Born approximation is then applied to obtain the correlations of the scattered fields. From the correlation of the scattered field, calculated is the complete set of scattering coefficients for polarimetric radar observation or brightness temperature in passive radiometer applications. In the remote sensing of terrestrial ecosystems, the development of microwave remote sensing technology and the potential of SAR to measure vegetation structure and biomass have increased effort to conduct experimental and theoretical researches on the interactions between microwave and vegetation canopies. The overall objective is to develop inversion algorithms to retrieve biophysical parameters from radar data. In this perspective, theoretical models and experimental data are methodically interconnected in the following manner: Due to the complexity of the interactions involved, all theoretical models have limited domains of validity; the proposed solution is to use theoretical models, which is validated by experiments, to establish the region in which the radar response is most sensitive to the parameters of interest; theoretically simulated data will be used to generate simple invertible models over the region. For applications to the remote sensing of sea ice, the developed theoretical models need to be tested with experimental measurements. With measured ground truth such as ice thickness, temperature, salinity, and structure, input parameters to the theoretical models can be obtained to calculate the polarimetric scattering coefficients for radars or brightness temperature for radiometers and then compare theoretical results with experimental data. Validated models will play an important role in the interpretation and classification of ice in monitoring global ice cover from space borne remote sensors in the future. We present an inversion algorithm based on a recently developed inversion method referred to as the Renormalized Source-Type Integral Equation approach. The objective of this method is to overcome some of the limitations and difficulties of the iterative Born technique. It recasts the inversion, which is nonlinear in nature, in terms of the solution of a set of linear equations; however, the final inversion equation is still nonlinear. The derived inversion equation is an exact equation which sums up the iterative Neuman (or Born) series in a closed form and, thus, is a valid representation even in the case when the Born series diverges; hence, the name Renormalized Source-Type Integral Equation Approach

Accurate Despeckling and Estimation of Polarimetric Features by Means of a Spatial Decorrelation of the Noise in Complex PolSAR Data

In this work, we extended a procedure for the spatial decorrelation of fully-developed speckle, originally developed for single-polarization SAR data, to fully-polarimetric SAR data. The spatial correlation of the noise depends on the tapering window in the Fourier domain used by the SAR processor to avoid defocusing of targets caused by Gibbs effects. Since each polarimetric channel is focused independently of the others, the noise-whitening procedure can be performed applying the decorrelation stage to each channel separately. Equivalently, the noise-whitening stage is applied to each element of the scattering matrix before any multilooking operation, either coherent or not, is performed. In order to evaluate the impact of a spatial decorrelation of the noise on the performance of polarimetric despeckling filters, we make use of simulated PolSAR data, having user-defined polarimetric features. We optionally introduce a spatial correlation of the noise in the simulated complex data by means of a 2D separable Hamming window in the Fourier domain. Then, we remove such a correlation by using the whitening procedure and compare the accuracy of both despeckling and polarimetric features estimation for the three following cases: uncorrelated, correlated, and decorrelated images. Simulation results showed a steady improvement of performance scores, most notably the equivalent number of looks (ENL), which increased after decorrelation and closely attained the value of the uncorrelated case. Besides ENL, the benefits of the noise decorrelation hold also for polarimetric features, whose estimation accuracy is diminished by the correlation. Also, the trends of simulations were confirmed by qualitative results of experiments carried out on a true Radarsat-2 image