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Speckle reduction is a preprocessing for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image interpretation and application. With the advances of convolutional neural network (CNN) models, excellent speckle filters have been continuously developed. However, supervised learning-based models suffer from a generalization deficiency due to the lack of clean SAR images. Additionally, other self-supervised learning (SSL)-based methods rely on multiple independent SAR images of the same scene to generate the filtered SAR image. In practice, these additional auxiliary datasets are not always available, which limits the application of these methods. To fulfill this gap, a novel self-supervised framework named Sublook2Sublook is proposed for single SAR images speckle filtering. The main contribution of this work lies in that a new theorem is founded which guarantee the cost function defined on the paired sublook SAR images is statistically equivalent to the supervised counterpart based on the speckled-clean SAR image pairs. Thereby, the sublook SAR images can be alternatively used for model training instead of the clean SAR images or additional auxiliary datasets. From this fashion, a complete self-supervised speckle filter is developed. First, sublook decomposition is performed in both azimuth and range directions. Then, optimal paired sublook images are selected based on a criteria of minimum L1 norm distance. Finally, the established self-supervised speckle filter can be trained with the paired sublook images. Extensive experimental studies are conducted with various SAR datasets in terms of different frequency bands and spatial resolutions from the Radarsat-2, COSMO-SkyMed, and ALOS-2 SAR satellites. Comparisons studies with four state-of-the-art despeckling methods confirm the superiority of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the proposed Sublook2Sublook framework can better smooth speckles in homogeneous areas while well preserve image details.

This article introduces an innovative approach in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) polarimetry and proposes a novel descriptor called polarimetric autocorrelation matrix. Different from polarimetric covariance and coherency matrices, the polarimetric autocorrelation matrix can capture hidden Doppler information in the frequency domain and encode it in the phase using higher order statistical methods. This matrix facilitates the joint extraction and analysis of polarization and Doppler information from fully polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data through a matrix analysis. This article explains that the polarimetric autocorrelation matrix can be decomposed into a Doppler-related matrix and a covariance-related matrix. The magnitudes and phases of these matrices provide insight into Doppler shifts between different polarizations and the variance of the backscattering coefficient. Our research demonstrates how the Doppler shift is influenced not only by the target’s radial velocity but also by radar polarization. Four quad-polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images are used for testing in this study, and a set of characterization features and parameters are derived from the polarimetric autocorrelation matrix. The novel descriptor, together with the new parameters, can detect man-made target and sea ice, mitigate ambiguity caused by moving targets, and indicate the motion status of ship targets and sea currents. Specifically for marine scenes, our data found Doppler differences in horizontal transmit and horizontal receive (HH) polarization and vertical transmit and vertical receive (VV) polarization induced by sea surface motion can be up to 100 Hz.

Physical parameter estimation of satellite is crucial in space situation awareness as it reflects valuable information. Polarimetric inverse synthetic aperture radar (Pol-ISAR) is a powerful sensor for space surveillance, providing rich information for satellite physical parameter estimation. Parabolic antennas, which are widely loaded in remote sensing and communication satellites, have received great attention recently. Dedicated to the space situation awareness issue using Pol-ISAR, a physical parameter joint estimation method of satellite parabolic antenna with key frame Pol-ISAR images is developed in this work. The core idea is to utilize the mapping relationship between parabolic antenna in 3-D space and its projection ellipse in 2-D ISAR image. Under special observation geometry, the closed-form expressions of parabolic antenna physical parameters are deduced for the first time, providing an efficient way for parameter estimation. Moreover, the abundant information within Pol-ISAR images is mined and utilized. Various polarimetric features are adopted for ellipse extraction and the subsequent physical parameter estimation. Compared with single-polarization channel data, the superiorities of polarimetric feature are validated using electromagnetic simulation data.