Sparse Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging Research Articles

Sparse SAR Imaging Algorithm in Marine Environments Based on Memory-Augmented Deep Unfolding Network

Oceanic targets, including ripples, islands, vessels, and coastlines, display distinct sparse characteristics, rendering the ocean a significant arena for sparse Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging rooted in sparse signal processing. Deep neural networks (DNNs), a current research emphasis, have, when integrated with sparse SAR, attracted notable attention for their exceptional imaging capabilities and high computational efficiency. Yet, the efficiency of traditional unfolding techniques is impeded by their architecturally inefficient design, which curtails their information transmission capacity and consequently detracts from the quality of reconstruction. This paper unveils a novel Memory-Augmented Deep Unfolding Network (MADUN) for SAR imaging in marine environments. Our methodology harnesses the synergies between deep learning and algorithmic unfolding, enhanced with a memory component, to elevate SAR imaging’s computational precision. At the heart of our investigation is the incorporation of High-Throughput Short-Term Memory (HSM) and Cross-Stage Long-Term Memory (CLM) within the MADUN framework, ensuring robust information flow across unfolding stages and solidifying the foundation for deep, long-term informational correlations. Our experimental results demonstrate that our strategy significantly surpasses existing methods in enhancing the reconstruction of sparse marine scenes.

DeepRED Based Sparse SAR Imaging

The integration of deep neural networks into sparse synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging is explored to enhance SAR imaging performance and reduce the system’s sampling rate. However, the scarcity of training samples and mismatches between the training data and the SAR system pose significant challenges to the method’s further development. In this paper, we propose a novel SAR imaging approach based on deep image prior powered by RED (DeepRED), enabling unsupervised SAR imaging without the need for additional training data. Initially, DeepRED is introduced as the regularization technique within the sparse SAR imaging model. Subsequently, variable splitting and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) are employed to solve the imaging model, alternately updating the magnitude and phase of the SAR image. Additionally, the SAR echo simulation operator is utilized as an observation model to enhance computational efficiency. Through simulations and real data experiments, we demonstrate that our method maintains imaging quality and system downsampling rate on par with deep-neural-network-based sparse SAR imaging but without the requirement for training data.

Contrastive Domain Adaptation-Based Sparse SAR Target Classification under Few-Shot Cases

Due to the imaging mechanism of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), it is difficult and costly to acquire abundant labeled SAR images. Moreover, a typical matched filtering (MF) based image faces the problems of serious noise, sidelobes, and clutters, which will bring down the accuracy of SAR target classification. Different from the MF-based result, a sparse image shows better quality with less noise and higher image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, theoretically using it for target classification will achieve better performance. In this paper, a novel contrastive domain adaptation (CDA) based sparse SAR target classification method is proposed to solve the problem of insufficient samples. In the proposed method, we firstly construct a sparse SAR image dataset by using the complex image based iterative soft thresholding (BiIST) algorithm. Then, the simulated and real SAR datasets are simultaneously sent into an unsupervised domain adaptation framework to reduce the distribution difference and obtain the reconstructed simulated SAR images for subsequent target classification. Finally, the reconstructed simulated images are manually labeled and fed into a shallow convolutional neural network (CNN) for target classification along with a small number of real sparse SAR images. Since the current definition of the number of small samples is still vague and inconsistent, this paper defines few-shot as less than 20 per class. Experimental results based on MSTAR under standard operating conditions (SOC) and extended operating conditions (EOC) show that the reconstructed simulated SAR dataset makes up for the insufficient information from limited real data. Compared with other typical deep learning methods based on limited samples, our method is able to achieve higher accuracy especially under the conditions of few shots.

Saliency-Based SAR Target Detection via Convolutional Sparse Feature Enhancement and Bayesian Inference

Traditional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) target detection methods use matched filtered SAR images as input, and the detection performance is restricted due to the high sidelobes and speckle noise of these images. Sparse SAR imaging methods developed in recent years provide the advantages of reducing sidelobes, noise, and clutter. The imaging results obtained with these methods could help improve the SAR target detection performance. In this article, to improve the target detection performance using sparse SAR images as input, we proposed a convolutional sparse feature enhancement method to meet the needs of Bayesian saliency detection. The proposed Bayesian saliency joint target detection method comprised the following three steps: first, to obtain sparse SAR images with continuous contours and fewer holes in the target area, we proposed a convolutional L1 sparse regularization method. Second, a regularization parameter optimization method was derived to quickly obtain optimal regularization parameters for saliency detection. Finally, target detection results were obtained through a superpixel-based Bayesian saliency joint detector. Extensive experiments verified that the proposed method could improve the SAR target detection accuracy in complex backgrounds.

Sparse Stripmap SAR Autofocusing Imaging Combining Phase Error Estimation and L₁-Norm Regularization Reconstruction

Various reasons can induce phase error during synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data collection. If phase error is ignored during SAR imaging, the defocused image will be obtained. Although conventional autofocusing methods can eliminate phase error in the full-sampled case, they are not suitable for down-sampled data. Sparse SAR imaging is a technique that combines sparse signal processing with SAR imaging. It can deal with both full- and down-sampled data if the underlying scene admits a sparse representation in a particular domain. Autofocusing methods based on sparse SAR have been developed in the last decades. However, they are known to be developed for spotlight mode. Furthermore, there is a phase ambiguity problem in existing methods, which will affect the uniqueness of the solution if not handled properly. In this paper, we propose a sparse SAR autofocusing imaging method suitable for stripmap mode and give a solution to phase ambiguity problem. The method jointly estimate phase error and reconstruct sparse SAR image in an iterative way. Each iteration consists of sparse imaging based on the phase error corrected echo and an update of the phase error estimation. Experimental results based on simulated and real data verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in coping with the full- or down-sampled data corrupted by the phase error.

Near-Field 3D Sparse SAR Direct Imaging with Irregular Samples

Sparse imaging is widely used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. Compared with the traditional matched filtering (MF) methods, sparse SAR imaging can directly image the scattered points of a target and effectively reduce the sidelobes and clutter in irregular samples. However, in view of the large-scale computational complexity of sparse reconstruction with raw echo data, traditional sparse reconstruction algorithms often require huge computational expense. To solve the above problems, in this paper, we propose a 3D near-field sparse SAR direct imaging algorithm for irregular trajectories, adopting a piece of preliminary information in the SAR image to update the dictionary matrix dimension, using the Gaussian iterative method, and optimizing the signal-processing techniques, which can achieve 3D sparse reconstruction in a more direct and rapid manner. The proposed algorithm was validated through simulations and empirical study of irregular scanning scenarios and compared with traditional MF and sparse reconstruction methods, and was shown to significantly reduce the computation time and effectively preserve the complex information of the scenes to achieve high-resolution image reconstruction.

Sparse Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging From Compressed Sensing and Machine Learning: Theories, applications, and trends

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation can be treated as a class of ill-posed linear inverse problems, and the resolution is limited by the data bandwidth for traditional imaging techniques via matched filter (MF). The sparse SAR imaging technology using compressed sensing (CS) has been developed for enhanced performance, such as superresolution, feature enhancement, etc. More recently, sparse SAR imaging from machine learning (ML), including deep learning (DL), has been further studied, showing great potential in the imaging area. However, there are still gaps between the two groups of methods for sparse SAR imaging, and their connections have not been established.

Sparse SAR Imaging Method for Ground Moving Target via GMTSI-Net

Ground moving targets (GMT), due to the existence of velocity in range and azimuth direction, will lead to the deviation from their true position and defocus in the azimuth direction during the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging process. To address this problem and compress the amount of echo data, a sparse SAR imaging method for ground moving targets is proposed. Specifically, we first constructed a two-dimensional sparse observation model of the GMT based on matched filter operators. Then, the observation model was solved by a deep network, GMT sparse imaging network (GMTSI-Net), which was mainly obtained by unfolding an iterative soft threshold algorithm (ISTA)-based iterative solution. Furthermore, we designed an adaptive unfolding module in the imaging network to improve the adaptability of the network to the input of echo data with different sampling ratios. The proposed imaging network can achieve faster and more accurate SAR images of ground moving targets under a low sampling ratio and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Simulated and measured data experiments were conducted to demonstrate the performance of imaging quality of the proposed method.

Complex-Valued Sparse SAR-Image-Based Target Detection and Classification

It is known that synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images obtained by typical matched filtering (MF)-based algorithms always suffer from serious noise, sidelobes and clutter. However, the improvement in image quality means that the complexity of SAR systems will increase, which affects the applications of SAR images. The introduction of sparse signal processing technologies into SAR imaging proposes a new way to solve this problem. Sparse SAR images obtained by sparse recovery algorithms show better image performance than typical complex SAR images with lower sidelobes and higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). As the most widely applied fields of SAR images, target detection and target classification rely on SAR images with high quality. Therefore, in this paper, a target detection framework based on sparse images recovered by complex approximate message passing (CAMP) algorithm and a novel classification network via sparse images reconstructed by the new iterative soft thresholding (BiIST) algorithm are proposed. Experimental results show that sparse SAR images have better performance whether for target classification or for target detection than the images recovered by MF-based algorithms, which validates the huge application potentials of sparse images.

Three-Dimensional Sparse SAR Imaging with Generalized Lq Regularization

Three-dimensional (3D) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging provides complete 3D spatial information, which has been used in environmental monitoring in recent years. Compared with matched filtering (MF) algorithms, the regularization technique can improve image quality. However, due to the substantial computational cost, the existing observation-matrix-based sparse imaging algorithm is difficult to apply to large-scene and 3D reconstructions. Therefore, in this paper, novel 3D sparse reconstruction algorithms with generalized Lq-regularization are proposed. First, we combine majorization–minimization (MM) and L1 regularization (MM-L1) to improve SAR image quality. Next, we combine MM and L1/2 regularization (MM-L1/2) to achieve high-quality 3D images. Then, we present the algorithm which combines MM and L0 regularization (MM-L0) to obtain 3D images. Finally, we present a generalized MM-Lq algorithm (GMM-Lq) for sparse SAR imaging problems with arbitrary q0≤q≤1 values. The proposed algorithm can improve the performance of 3D SAR images, compared with existing regularization techniques, and effectively reduce the amount of calculation needed. Additionally, the reconstructed complex image retains the phase information, which makes the reconstructed SAR image still suitable for interferometry applications. Simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the algorithms.

Design and Performance Analysis of Sparse TOPS SAR Mode

Terrain observation by progressive scans (TOPS) is a novel and promising wide-swath synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging mode, which overcomes the scalloping effect existing in ScanSAR. Traditional imaging algorithms are computationally efficient in raw data processing of TOPS, but the problems from clutter and sidelobes suppression have not been effectively solved. Sparse SAR imaging not only effectively solves these problems, but also has great potential in improving system performance, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">e.g.</i> , lower requirement of pulse repetition frequency (PRF), higher swath coverage, less data amount, and lower system complexity. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel sparse TOPS SAR imaging mode. The proposed mode combines advantages of sparse imaging system and TOPS mode to achieve high-quality and wide-swath SAR imaging. In this mode, we first design the beam position by timing diagram. Then the basic parameters of the mode are calculated according to the radar equation, and the properties such as grating lobes are analyzed. Finally, an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_{2,1}$</tex-math></inline-formula> -norm regularization based sparse TOPS SAR imaging algorithm is introduced to achieve the high-quality sparse scene recovery. Experimental results show that compared with conventional TOPS imaging mode, the proposed mode can obtain wide swath with lower PRF and effectively solve the effect on distributed target ambiguity ratio (DTAR). Compared with matched filtering (MF) based TOPS imaging algorithm, the sparse method can achieve unambiguous reconstruction of the considered scene from down-sampled data, and obtain the image with less artifacts.

Sparse SAR Imaging Based on Periodic Block Sampling Data

Recently, a novel design scheme of low-earth-orbit spaceborne mini-synthetic aperture radar (MiniSAR) system is proposed to exploit the integrated transceiver to collect the azimuth periodic block sampling data by using alternated transmitting and receiving operations. Because such collected data are downsampled, the images recovered by the typical matched filtering (MF)-based methods have the problems of obvious azimuth ambiguities, ghosts, and energy dispersion. To find a suitable method for such data, with the help of sparse signal processing technique, we first introduce sparse synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm regularization-based approximated observation method to recover the large-scale considered scene. To further improve the imaging performance, a novel approximated observation unambiguous sparse SAR imaging method via <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{2,1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm is proposed. Compared with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm -based method, the recovered image by the proposed one achieves better imaging quality with reduced azimuth ambiguities and ghosts. Experimental results on simulated and real data validate the proposed method.

An RCS Measurement Method Using Sparse Imaging Based 3-D SAR Complex Image

Three-dimensional (3-D) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) near-field imaging provides a novel radar cross section (RCS) measurement method, which has been widely concerned in the microwave field. However, the accuracy of RCS measurement based on image is easily affected by sidelobes of matching filtering (MF) imaging and background clutter. Although the existing observation-matrix-based sparse SAR imaging algorithm can suppress sidelobes and clutter, it requires huge computational cost. To solve the above problems, an RCS measurement method using sparse imaging based 3-D SAR complex image is proposed. First, 3-D sparse imaging based complex image is used to suppress sidelobe and clutter of MF image. After that, the far-field RCS of the target is obtained by the compensation factor. Compared with the observation-matrix-based sparse SAR imaging algorithm, the proposed algorithm can reduce the computation time while retain the phase information of scene distribution. Compared with the RCS measurement based on MF image, the RCS measurement performance of the proposed method is improved. The simulation and real data of the system results validate the proposed method.

Sparse SAR Imaging and Quantitative Evaluation Based on Nonconvex and TV Regularization

Sparse signal processing has been used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging due to the maturity of compressed sensing theory. As a typical sparse reconstruction method, L1 regularization generally causes bias effects as well as ignoring region-based features. Our team has proposed to linearly combine the nonconvex penalty and the total variation (TV)-norm penalty as a compound regularizer in the imaging model, called nonconvex and TV regularization, which can not only reduce the bias caused by L1 regularization but also enhance point-based and region-based features. In this paper, we use the variable splitting scheme and modify the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), generating a novel algorithm to solve the above optimization problem. Moreover, we analyze the radiometric properties of sparse-signal-processing-based SAR imaging results and introduce three indexes suitable for sparse SAR imaging for quantitative evaluation. In experiments, we process the Gaofen-3 (GF-3) data utilizing the proposed method, and quantitatively evaluate the reconstructed SAR image quality. Experimental results and image quality analysis verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving the reconstruction accuracy and the radiometric resolution without sacrificing the spatial resolution.

An Accurate Sparse SAR Imaging Method for Enhancing Region-Based Features Via Nonconvex and TV Regularization

With the rapid development of compressed sensing theories and applications, sparse signal processing has been widely used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging during the recent years. As an efficient tool for sparse reconstruction, ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> optimization induces sparsity the most effectively, and the ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> -norm penalty is usually combined with the total variation norm (TV-norm) penalty to construct a compound regularizer in order to enhance the point-based features as well as the region-based features. However, as a convex optimizer, the analytic solution of ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> regularization-based sparse signal reconstruction is usually a biased estimation. Aiming at this issue, in this article, we quantitatively analyzed the variation of reconstruction bias with respect to the complex reflectivity of targets, the undersampling ratio and the noise power. In order to reduce the bias effect and improve the reconstruction accuracy, we adopted the nonconvex regularization-based sparse SAR imaging method with a nonconvex penalty family. Furthermore, we linearly combined the nonconvex penalty and the TV-norm penalty to form a compound regularizer in the imaging model, which can improve the reconstruction accuracy of distributed targets and maintain the continuity of the backscattering coefficient. Simulation results showed that compared with ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> regularization, nonconvex regularization can reduce the average relative bias from 10.88% to 0.25%; compared with the matched filtering method and ℓ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> and TV regularization, nonconvex & TV regularization can reduce the variance of the uniformly distributed targets by 80% without losing of reconstruction accuracy. Experiments on Gaofen-3 SAR data are also exploited to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Verification of Complex Image Based Sparse SAR Imaging Method on GaoFen-3 Dataset

Sparse signal processing-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging, also known as sparse SAR imaging, is the main research direction of sparse microwave imaging theory. Compared with a conventional SAR system, sparse SAR imaging radar has significant potential to improve imaging performance. However, because it requires heavy computations, the application of sparse SAR imaging in large-scene recovery has become difficult, which restricts its further applications. Additionally, complex SAR images, rather than raw data, are usually used for data archiving due to a number of reasons such as data copyright and system confidentiality. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study how sparse imaging can be achieved using only Matched Filtering (MF) recovered complex images with less computational cost. GaoFen-3 is China’s first 1-m resolution multi-polarization C-band satellite. It has a high-resolution, wide swath imaging ability and hence plays an important role in disaster monitoring and ocean surveillance applications. In this paper, we introduce a complex image-based sparse SAR imaging method to process GaoFen-3 complex image data and improve image performance. Experimental results show that the sparse imaging results have lower sidelobes, higher signal-to-clutter and noise ratio, and better target distinguishing ability compared with inputted images. Additionally, sparse imaging can effectively preserve the statistical distribution and phase information of images that makes the recovered GaoFen-3 sparse image-based applications such as interferometric synthetic aperture radar and constant false alarm ratio detection possible.

From Theory to Application: Real-Time Sparse SAR Imaging

In recent years, the sparse signal processing technique has shown significant potential in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging, such as image performance improvement and downsampled data-based image recovery. However, due to the huge computational complexity needed, the existing sparse SAR imaging methods, such as conventional observation matrix-based and azimuth-range decouple-based algorithms, are not able to achieve real-time processing, especially for the large-scale scenes, which seriously restricts its application in some fields, e.g., real-time monitoring and early warning. To solve this problem, this article presents a novel real-time sparse SAR imaging method, which can get a similar image performance to that obtained by the existing sparse imaging methods, to reduce the computational complexity to the same order as that required by matched filtering (MF)-based algorithms. This means that with the proposed method, real-time data processing for practical large-scale scene sparse reconstruction becomes possible. Experimental results based on simulated and real data along with a performance analysis are presented to validate the proposed real-time sparse imaging method.

Efficient Parameter Estimation for Sparse SAR Imaging Based on Complex Image and Azimuth-Range Decouple.

Sparse signal processing theory has been applied to synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. In compressive sensing (CS), the sparsity is usually considered as a known parameter. However, it is unknown practically. For many functions of CS, we need to know this parameter. Therefore, the estimation of sparsity is crucial for sparse SAR imaging. The sparsity is determined by the size of regularization parameter. Several methods have been presented for automatically estimating the regularization parameter, and have been applied to sparse SAR imaging. However, these methods are deduced based on an observation matrix, which will entail huge computational and memory costs. In this paper, to enhance the computational efficiency, an efficient adaptive parameter estimation method for sparse SAR imaging is proposed. The complex image-based sparse SAR imaging method only considers the threshold operation of the complex image, which can reduce the computational costs significantly. By utilizing this feature, the parameter is pre-estimated based on a complex image. In order to estimate the sparsity accurately, adaptive parameter estimation is then processed in the raw data domain, combining with the pre-estimated parameter and azimuth-range decouple operators. The proposed method can reduce the computational complexity from a quadratic square order to a linear logarithm order, which can be used in the large-scale scene. Simulated and Gaofen-3 SAR data processing results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.

Multi-Angle SAR Sparse Image Reconstruction With Improved Attributed Scattering Model

The traditional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sparse imaging methods are based on the point scattering model. However, this model is not suitable for many distributed targets with large variations in scattering characteristics at different angles, i.e., many distributed targets can no longer be considered as a combination of a series of ideal point scatterers under multi-angle observations. To solve this problem, by introducing the improved attributed scattering model into the traditional SAR echo model, we propose our multi-angle sparse image reconstruction method (MASIRM). Through modeling the illuminated scene with point scatterers and line-segment-scatterers, a multi-angle echo model is first presented. By generating an adaptive mixed dictionary and applying the pattern-coupled sparse Bayesian learning, the MASIRM obtains more geometric information of the distributed target with higher quality sparse SAR images. Real data experiments demonstrate that MASIRM performs favorably against traditional imaging methods.

Comparison of Raw Data-Based and Complex Image-Based Sparse SAR Imaging Methods.

Sparse signal processing has already been introduced to synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which shows potential in improving imaging performance based on raw data or a complex image. In this paper, the relationship between a raw data-based sparse SAR imaging method (RD-SIM) and a complex image-based sparse SAR imaging method (CI-SIM) is compared and analyzed in detail, which is important to select appropriate algorithms in different cases. It is found that they are equivalent when the raw data is fully sampled. Both of them can effectively suppress noise and sidelobes, and hence improve the image performance compared with a matched filtering (MF) method. In addition, the target-to-background ratio (TBR) or azimuth ambiguity-to-signal ratio (AASR) performance indicators of RD-SIM are superior to those of CI-SIM in down-sampling data-based imaging, nonuniform displace phase center sampling, and sparse SAR imaging model-based azimuth ambiguity suppression.