Improved utilization of polsar polarization signatures using convolutional-deep neural nets for land cover classification

Abstract

Normalized Euclidean distance (NED) and normalized signature correlation mapper (NSCM) are most popularly used pattern classifiers with polarization signatures (PSs) based polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data applications. These methods are not able to fully exploit the PSs as they do not exploit the spatial context or pattern of PSs which is essential. Improved utilization of PSs is still required for PolSAR applications such as agriculture crop classification and monitoring. In this study, convolutional deep neural networks (C-DNNs) are introduced and utilized as pattern classifiers for PS classification. C-DNNs have the ability to consider and control the influence of local neighborhood pixels during classification. Therefore, in this study C-DNNs are utilized to extract and exploit subtle changes between PSs of land covers to improve classification performance. Comparison with NED and NSCM classifiers signify the contribution of C-DNNs by improved performance in PolSAR data classification.