Optimal speckle reduction in multi-look polarimetric SAR image

Author

Liu, Guoqing ; Huang, Shunji ; Torre, A. ; Rubertone, F.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Eng., Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol., Chengdu, China

Volume

1

fYear

34881

fDate

10-14 Jul1995

Firstpage

664

Abstract

Presents a method, called the multi-look polarimetric whitening filtering (MPWF), to reduce speckle in multi-look polarimetric SAR image by processing elements of the complex covariance matrix into pixel intensity that minimizes the image speckle. By considering a multiplicative speckle model, the solution of the MPWF is proved to be the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the scalar texture parameter. The performance of the MPWF for detection of targets in clutter is also analyzed. Experimental results with NASA/JPL L-band 4-look polarimetric SAR data demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented method. Compared with the span and |HH|² processing, the MPWF is shown to provide better target detection performance

Keywords

covariance matrices; filtering theory; geophysical signal processing; image texture; interference suppression; maximum likelihood estimation; minimisation; polarimetry; radar clutter; radar imaging; radar polarimetry; remote sensing by radar; speckle; synthetic aperture radar; L-band 4-look polarimetric SAR data; clutter; complex covariance matrix; detection; image speckle; maximum likelihood estimation; multi-look polarimetric SAR image; multiplicative speckle model; optimal speckle reduction; pixel intensity; polarimetric whitening filtering; scalar texture parameter; target detection performance; targets; Covariance matrix; Filtering; L-band; Maximum likelihood detection; Maximum likelihood estimation; NASA; Object detection; Performance analysis; Pixel; Speckle;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1995. IGARSS '95. 'Quantitative Remote Sensing for Science and Applications', International

Conference_Location

Firenze

Print_ISBN

0-7803-2567-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.1995.520486

Filename

520486