Parametric Synthetic Aperture Radar Image Recovery for Multiple Linear Structures: An Image Domain Approach

• Published in: Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 12; no. 12; p. 1996
• Main Authors: Wen, Yuhan, Wang, Yan, Ding, Zegang, Zeng, Tao, Chen, Xinliang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2020
• Subjects: Anechoic chambers; Animal behavior; Anisotropy; Computer simulation; Data acquisition; Domains; Experiments; Feature extraction; Football; Image reconstruction; Information retrieval; linear structure; linear structures recovery; Mathematical models; parametric scattering models; Performance evaluation; Phase distribution; Radar; Radar imaging; Recovery; Remote sensing; Scattering; Scene analysis; Synthetic aperture radar; synthetic aperture radar (SAR); Target recognition; Tower cranes; Unmanned vehicles
• ISSN: 2072-4292; 2072-4292
• DOI: 10.3390/rs12121996

The linear structures in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images can provide important geometric information regarding the illuminated objects. However, the linear structures of various objects sometimes disappear in traditional SAR images, which severely affects the application in automated scene analysis and information extraction techniques. This paper proposes a parametric SAR image recovery method for linear structures of extended targets. By extracting the spatial phase distribution feature in image domain, the proposed method is used to identify the endpoints among all of the scattered points in SAR images and reconstruct the disappeared linear structures based on the scattering model. The method can be generally divided into three procedures: endpoints and point targets classification, linear structures recognition, and linear structures reconstruction. In the first step, the endpoints of linear structures and point targets are classified by setting a threshold related to the spatial phase distribution feature. Afterwards, the linear structures recognition method is used to determine which two endpoints can be formed into a linear structure. Finally, the parametric scattering models are used to reconstruct the disappeared linear structures. Experiments are conducted on both computer simulations and the data that were acquired by microwave anechoic chamber experiment, tower crane radar experiment, and unmanned vehicle radar experiment in order to validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.