Review on nontraditional perspectives of synthetic aperture radar image despeckling

Abstract

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image despeckling is a preprocessing method. SAR images are, by default, noisy in nature. The kind of noise found in SAR images is called speckle noise. The effect of this noise on SAR images is highly adverse. It degrades the quality of the SAR image, resulting in the loss of vital information. Since SAR images are inherently speckled in nature, it costs a lot of information loss. The removal of such noise from the SAR image is mandatory and is the first step. The elimination of speckle noise from SAR images is called SAR image despeckling. There are various traditional and nontraditional methods of SAR image despeckling based on Bayesian and non-Bayesian techniques. The SAR image despeckling methods based on Bayesian techniques are further subdivided into spatial and transform domains. This paper presents a comparative review of nontraditional perspectives on SAR image despeckling. The comparison is made based on methodology, objectives, merits, and demerits. Its focus is to do analysis of all the latest research done in the field of SAR image despeckling using nontraditional methods.