Generating simulated SAR images using Generative Adversarial Network

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) target classification is an important branch of SAR image interpretation. The deep learning based SAR target classification algorithms have made remarkable achievements. But the acquisition and annotation of SAR target images are time-consuming and laborious, and it is difficult to obtain sufficient training data in many cases. The insufficient training data can make deep learning based models suffering from over-fitting, which will severely limit their wide application in SAR target classification. Motivated by the above problem, this paper employs transfer-learning to transfer the prior knowledge learned from a simulated SAR dataset to a real SAR dataset. To overcome the sample restriction problem caused by the poor feature discriminability for real SAR data. A simple and effective sample spectral regularization method is proposed, which can regularize the singular values of each SAR image feature to improve the feature discriminability. Based on the proposed regularization method, we design a transfer-learning pipeline to leverage the simulated SAR data as well as acquire better feature discriminability. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is feasible for the sample restriction problem in SAR target classification. Furthermore, the proposed method can improve the classification accuracy when relatively sufficient training data is available, and it can be plugged into any convolutional neural network (CNN) based SAR classification models.

High-performance neural networks for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) automatic target recognition (ATR) often encounter the challenge of data scarcity. The lack of sufficient labeled SAR image datasets leads to the consideration of using simulated data to supplement the dataset. On the one hand, electromagnetic computation simulations provide high amplitude accuracy but are inefficient for large-scale datasets due to their complex computations and physical models. On the other hand, ray tracing simulations offer high geometric accuracy and computational efficiency but struggle with low amplitude correctness, hindering accurate numerical feature extraction. Furthermore, the emergence of generative adversarial networks (GANs) provides a way to generate simulated datasets, trying to balance computational efficiency with image quality. Nevertheless, the simulated SAR images generated based on random noise lack constraints, and it is also difficult to generate images that exceed the parameter conditions of the real image’s training set. Hence, it is essential to integrate physics-based simulation techniques into GANs to enhance the generalization ability of the imaging parameters. In this paper, we present the SingleScene-SAR Simulator, an efficient framework for SAR image simulation that operates under limited real SAR data. This simulator integrates rasterized shooting and bouncing rays (SBR) with cycle GAN, effectively achieving both amplitude correctness and geometric accuracy. The simulated images are appropriate for augmenting datasets in target recognition networks. Firstly, the SingleScene-SAR Simulator employs a rasterized SBR algorithm to generate radar cross section (RCS) images of target models. Secondly, a specific training pattern for cycle GAN is established to translate noisy RCS images into simulated SAR images that closely resemble real ones. Finally, these simulated images are utilized for data augmentation. Experimental results based on the constructed dataset show that with only one scene SAR image containing 30 target chips, the SingleScene-SAR Simulator can efficiently produce simulated SAR images that exhibit high similarity in both spatial and statistical distributions compared with real images. By employing simulated SAR images for data augmentation, the accuracy of target recognition networks can be consistently and significantly enhanced.

Thanks to the availability of large-scale data, deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have witnessed success in various applications of computer vision. However, the performance of CNNs on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image classification is unsatisfactory due to the lack of well-labeled SAR data, as well as the differences in imaging mechanisms between SAR images and optical images. Therefore, this paper addresses the problem of SAR image classification by employing the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to produce more labeled SAR data. We propose special GANs for generating SAR images to be used in the training process. First, we incorporate the quadratic operation into the GAN, extending the convolution to make the discriminator better represent the SAR data; second, the statistical characteristics of SAR images are integrated into the GAN to make its value function more reasonable; finally, two types of parallel connected GANs are designed, one of which we call PWGAN, combining the Deep Convolutional GAN (DCGAN) and Wasserstein GAN with Gradient Penalty (WGAN-GP) together in the structure, and the other, which we call CNN-PGAN, applying a pre-trained CNN as a discriminator to the parallel GAN. Both PWGAN and CNN-PGAN consist of a number of discriminators and generators according to the number of target categories. Experimental results on the TerraSAR-X single polarization dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

It is expensive and time-consuming to obtain a large number of labeled synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. In the task of small training data size, the results of target detection on SAR images using deep network approaches are usually not ideal. In this study, considering that optical remote sensing images are much easier to be labeled than SAR images, we assume to have a large number of labeled optical remote sensing images and a small number of labeled SAR images with the similar scenes, propose to transfer knowledge from optical remote sensing images to SAR images, and develop a domain adaptive Faster R-CNN for SAR target detection with small training data size. In the proposed method, in order to make full use of the label information and realize more accurate domain adaptation knowledge transfer, an instance level domain adaptation constraint is used rather than feature level domain adaptation constraint. Specifically, generative adversarial network (GAN) constraint is applied as the domain adaptation constraint in the adaptation module after the proposals of Faster R-CNN to achieve instance level domain adaptation and learn the transferable features. The experimental results on the measured SAR image dataset show that the proposed method has higher detection accuracy in the task of SAR target detection with small training data size than the traditional Faster R-CNN.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image target detection and recognition (SAR-TDR) tasks have become research hot spots in the remote sensing application. These targets include ships, vehicles, aircraft, oil tanks, bridges, and so on. However, with the rapid development of SAR technology and increasingly complex electromagnetic environment, complex characteristics of SAR images bring severe challenges to the accurate SAR-TDR via traditional physical models or manual feature-extraction-based machine learning methods. In recent years, deep learning (DL), as a powerful automatic feature extraction algorithm, has been widely used in the computer vision domain. More specifically, DL has also been introduced into the SAR-TDR tasks and has effectively achieved good performance in terms of accuracy, real-time processing, etc. With the rapid development of DL, SAR image processing, and practical requirements of SAR-TDR in civilian and military domains, it is crucial to conduct a systematic survey on SAR-TDR in the past few years. In this survey article, we mainly conduct a systematic overview of DL-based SAR-TDR literature on two tasks, i.e., target recognition (e.g., ground vehicles, ships, and aircraft) and target detection (e.g., ships, aircraft, change detection, sea surface oil spills, and oil tanks). More specifically, our related works about these topics are also presented to verify the effectiveness of DL-based methods. First, several DL methods (e.g., convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, autoencoders, and generative adversarial networks), commonly used in SAR-TDR, are briefly introduced. Then, a systematic review of DL-based SAR-TDR (including our related works) is presented. Finally, the current challenges and future possible research directions are deeply analyzed and discussed.

We address the application of model-supported exploitation techniques to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. The emphasis is on monitoring SAR imagery using wide area 2D and/or 3D site models along with contextual information. We consider here the following tasks useful in monitoring: (a) site model construction using segmentation and labeling techniques, (b) target detection, (c) target classification and indexing, and (d) SAR image-site model registration. The 2-D wide area site models used here for SAR image exploitation differ from typical site models developed for RADIUS applications, in that they do not model specific facilities, but constitute wide area site models of cultural features such as urban clutter areas, roads, clearings, fields, etc. These models may be derived directly from existing site models, possibly constructed from electro-optical (EO) observations. When such models are not available, a set of segmentation and labeling techniques described here can be used for the construction of 2D site models. The use of models can potentially yield critical information which can disambiguate target signatures in SAR images. We address registration of SAR and EO images to a common site model. Specific derivations are given for the case of registration within the RCDE platform. We suggest a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection scheme and a topographic primal sketch (TPS) based classification scheme for monitoring target occurrences in SAR images. The TPS of an observed target is matched against candidate targets TPSs synthesized for the preferred target orientation, inferred from context (e.g. road or parking lot targets). Experimental results on real and synthetic SAR images are provided.

This paper presents an enhanced ensemble classification framework for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) under diverse operational conditions, including Standard Operating Conditions (SOC) and Extended Operating Conditions (EOC). The proposed method integrates the strengths of Residual Neural Networks (ResNet) replacing Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and template matching, leveraging majority voting to combine their complementary capabilities. The ensemble framework achieves improved robustness and classification accuracy across varied scenarios. The methodology employs ResNet, a deep learning architecture known for its superior feature extraction and classification capabilities, replacing AlexNet to address limitations in generalization and consistency. ResNet demonstrated better performance with average accuracies of 92.67% under SOC and 88.9% under EOC, showing consistent results across all six target classes, as compared to the CNN-based ensemble approach with average accuracies of 90.30% under SOC and 87.22% under EOC. The SVM is employed for its robustness in handling overfitting and classifying features extracted from 16 region properties. Template matching is included for its resilience in challenging conditions where deep learning techniques may underperform. Experimental validation using the MSTAR dataset, a standard benchmark for SAR ATR, highlights the effectiveness of this ensemble approach. The results confirm significant improvements in classification accuracy and robustness over individual classifiers, demonstrating the practical applicability of the ensemble approach to real-world SAR ATR challenges. This research advances SAR ATR by addressing critical challenges, including noise, occlusion, and variations in viewing angles while achieving high classification performance under diverse conditions. The integration of ResNet further enhances the framework’s adaptability and reliability.

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images obtained with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's L band system in the Tower Ocean Wave and Radar Dependence (TOWARD) oceanographic experiment are compared with images generated by a simulation program implementing a SAR ocean imaging model based on two‐scale hydrodynamic and electromagnetic scattering approximate models. A critically regarded test of a theory of SAR ocean imaging is its prediction of the best image focus dependence on surface motion. The primary means of comparison here is an estimate of the best focus parameter that uses a subimage cross‐correlation technique. The focus parameter estimates for both the actual and simulated images show (1) a reversal in sign with reversal in dominant longwave direction relative to the SAR direction, (2) a magnitude increase with an increase in magnitude of the angle between the dominent long wave and SAR axes, and (3) an independence of the altitude and also the range‐to‐velocity ratio. All equivalent velocity estimates are of the order of the dominant longwave phase velocity, normalized by the SAR vehicle velocity, and agree well qualitatively though there are some quantitative differences. These behaviors are in agreement with a related analytical prediction. The “visibility” of the long waves' SAR image artifacts, for this TOWARD data set, increased with increased altitude and also with increased range‐to‐velocity ratio for both the actual and simulated images, as was predicted by a related analysis. Agreement of spectral density estimates of the actual and simulated SAR images generally required an order of magnitude increase in the strength of the hydrodynamic interaction of the long and short waves. This may indicate, as have surface measurements in TOWARD and other experiments, that the two‐scale model does not fully describe this nonlinear interaction. With this interaction adjustment, a comparison of actual and simulated images using an alternative focus criterion showed very close agreement in some cases.

The existence of clouds is one of the main factors that contributes to missing information in optical remote sensing images, restricting their further applications for Earth observation, so how to reconstruct the missing information caused by clouds is of great concern. Inspired by the image-to-image translation work based on convolutional neural network model and the heterogeneous information fusion thought, we propose a novel cloud removal method in this paper. The approach can be roughly divided into two steps: in the first step, a specially designed convolutional neural network (CNN) translates the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images into simulated optical images in an object-to-object manner; in the second step, the simulated optical image, together with the SAR image and the optical image corrupted by clouds, is fused to reconstruct the corrupted area by a generative adversarial network (GAN) with a particular loss function. Between the first step and the second step, the contrast and luminance of the simulated optical image are randomly altered to make the model more robust. Two simulation experiments and one real-data experiment are conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method on Sentinel 1/2, GF 2/3 and airborne SAR/optical data. The results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms that also employ SAR images as auxiliary data.

Ship detection in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is becoming a research hotspot. In recent years, as the rise of artificial intelligence, deep learning has almost dominated SAR ship detection community for its higher accuracy, faster speed, less human intervention, etc. However, today, there is still a lack of a reliable deep learning SAR ship detection dataset that can meet the practical migration application of ship detection in large-scene space-borne SAR images. Thus, to solve this problem, this paper releases a Large-Scale SAR Ship Detection Dataset-v1.0 (LS-SSDD-v1.0) from Sentinel-1, for small ship detection under large-scale backgrounds. LS-SSDD-v1.0 contains 15 large-scale SAR images whose ground truths are correctly labeled by SAR experts by drawing support from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Google Earth. To facilitate network training, the large-scale images are directly cut into 9000 sub-images without bells and whistles, providing convenience for subsequent detection result presentation in large-scale SAR images. Notably, LS-SSDD-v1.0 has five advantages: (1) large-scale backgrounds, (2) small ship detection, (3) abundant pure backgrounds, (4) fully automatic detection flow, and (5) numerous and standardized research baselines. Last but not least, combined with the advantage of abundant pure backgrounds, we also propose a Pure Background Hybrid Training mechanism (PBHT-mechanism) to suppress false alarms of land in large-scale SAR images. Experimental results of ablation study can verify the effectiveness of the PBHT-mechanism. LS-SSDD-v1.0 can inspire related scholars to make extensive research into SAR ship detection methods with engineering application value, which is conducive to the progress of SAR intelligent interpretation technology.

Deep learning has obtained remarkable achievements in computer vision, especially image and video processing. However, in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image recognition, the application of DNNs is usually restricted due to data insufficiency. To augment datasets, generative adversarial networks (GANs) are usually used to generate numerous photo-realistic SAR images. Although there are many pixel-level metrics to measure GAN’s performance from the quality of generated SAR images, there are few measurements to evaluate whether the generated SAR images include the most representative features of the target. In this case, the classifier probably categorizes a SAR image into the corresponding class based on “wrong” criterion, i.e., “Clever Hans”. In this paper, local interpretable model-agnostic explanation (LIME) is innovatively utilized to evaluate whether a generated SAR image possessed the most representative features of a specific kind of target. Firstly, LIME is used to visualize positive contributions of the input SAR image to the correct prediction of the classifier. Subsequently, these representative SAR images can be selected handily by evaluating how much the positive contribution region matches the target. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can ally “Clever Hans” phenomenon greatly caused by the spurious relationship between generated SAR images and the corresponding classes.

In general, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and image processing are two sequential steps in SAR image processing. Due to the large size of SAR images, most image processing algorithms require image segmentation before processing. However, the existence of speckle noise in SAR images, as well as poor contrast and the uneven distribution of gray values in the same target, make SAR images difficult to segment. In order to facilitate the subsequent processing of SAR images, this paper proposes a new method that combines the back-projection algorithm (BPA) and a first-order gradient operator to enhance the edges of SAR images to overcome image segmentation problems. For complex-valued signals, the gradient operator was applied directly to the imaging process. The experimental results of simulated images and real images validate our proposed method. For the simulated scene, the supervised image segmentation evaluation indexes of our method have more than 1.18%, 11.2% and 11.72% improvement on probabilistic Rand index (PRI), variability index (VI), and global consistency error (GCE). The proposed imaging method will make SAR image segmentation and related applications easier.

Ship detection in low-quality Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images poses a persistent challenge. Noise signals in complex environments disrupt imaging conditions, hindering SAR systems from acquiring precise target information, thereby significantly compromising the performance of detectors. Some methods mitigate interference via denoising techniques, while others introduce noise using classical methods to learn target features in the presence of noise. This conundrum is regarded as a cross-domain problem in this paper; a ship detection method in low-quality images is proposed to learn features of targets and shrink serious deterioration of detection performance by utilizing Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). First, an image-to-image translation task is implemented using CycleGAN to generate low-quality SAR images with complex interference from the source domain to the target domain. Second, with the annotation inheritance, these generated SAR images participate in a training process to improve the detection accuracy and model robustness. Multiple experiments indicate that the proposed method conspicuously improves the detection performance and efficaciously reduces the missed detection rate in the SAR ship detection task. This cross-domain approach achieved outstanding improvements in the form of 11.0% mAP and 3.22% mAP on the GaoFen-3 ship dataset and SRSSD-V1.0, respectively. In addition, the characteristics and potentials of near-shore and off-shore SAR image reconstruction with style transfer based on Generative Adversarial Networks were explored and analyzed in this work.

The usage of a hypersonic platform for remote sensing application has promising prospects, especially for hypersonic platform-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. However, the high-speed of hypersonic platform will lead to extreme friction between the platform and air, which will cause the ionization of air. The ionized gas forms the plasma sheath wrapped around the hypersonic platform. The plasma sheath will severely affect the propagation of SAR signal and further affect the SAR imaging. Therefore, hypersonic platform-borne SAR imaging should be studied from a physical perspective. In this paper, hypersonic platform-borne SAR imaging under plasma sheath is analyzed. The SAR signal propagation in plasma sheath is computed using scatter matrix method. The proposed SAR signal model is verified by using a ground experiment system. Moreover, the effect of attenuation caused by plasma sheath on SAR imaging is studied under different SAR parameters and plasma sheath. The result shows that attenuation caused by plasma sheath will degrade the SAR imaging quality and even cause the point and area targets to be submerged into the noise. The real SAR images under plasma sheath also illustrate this phenomenon. Furthermore, by studying imaging results under different SAR and plasma parameters, it can be concluded that the severe degradation of SAR imaging quality appears at condition of high plasma sheath electron density and low SAR carrier frequency. The work in this paper will be beneficial for the study of hypersonic platform-borne SAR imaging and design of hypersonic SAR imaging systems in the future.

Although Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can capture rich land cover information as a most important advanced technique in the field of international earth observation, the application effects still limited significantly. The reason is that the study of SAR imaging processing, SAR image processing and SAR applications are conducted respectively, the integrated study are lacked for parameter selection of SAR imaging processing and SAR image processing and targets identification of SAR application. Focusing on above science problems, the study for phase high fidelity model of high precision interferometric SAR, SAR non-stationary backscattering characteristics and cognition, SAR three-dimensional electromagnetic scattering modeling and its scattering mechanism and SAR multi-parameters optimization information extraction has been conducted. The typical natural distributed targets and man-made targets such as surface deformation, sea ice, building complex and collapsed building are selected, the method and application study oriented to SAR environmental parameters inversion are conduced, the main result and conclusion are as follows: (1) The overall theoretical frames of SAR information integrated processing was proposed; The simulation and ground validation system used to assess the effects of SAR information integrated processing was created; furthermore, the spaceborne SAR imaging algorithm with three steps focusing processing was proposed and realized the multi-modal integrated imaging processing and improved the imaging processing precision. (2) In terms of SAR information integrated processing of natural targets, focusing on phase high fidelity imaging processing of interferometric SAR surface deformation monitoring, an novel spaceborne SAR high fidelity simulation method based on stationary RCS and improved Goldstein SAR interferogram filter based on empirical mode decomposition were proposed. Focusing on multi-parameters optimization processing of sea ice types classification, the multi-channel spaceborne SAR sparse imaging method based on compressive sensing, Kalman filter for removal of scalloping and inter-scan banding in ScanSAR images and SVM sea ice classification method combined with sea ice concentration were proposed. (3) In terms of SAR information integrated processing of man-made targets, focusing on non-stationary backscattering from building complex, mitigation of azimuth ambiguities in spaceborne stripmap SAR iamges using selective restoration, SAR image despeckling by selective 3D filtering of multiple compressive reconstructed images and man-made target detection in urban areas based on a new azimuth stationary extraction method were proposed. Focusing on three-dimensional modeling and fast extraction of collapsed building, H-a-p method used for collapsed building extraction was proposed.