A General Feature Paradigm for Unsupervised Cross-Domain PolSAR Image Classification

Abstract

Limited labels and increasing multisource data promote domain adaptation (DA) problem as a challenging study for polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) interpretation. Existing DAs for optical images cannot generalize over PolSAR imagery due to its special side-imaging characteristics and complex distribution shifts. In this letter, a general feature paradigm (GFP) is proposed for unsupervised cross-domain PolSAR image classification. The GFP is based on a key observation that interclass aggregation is optimized after four-step feature transformations. This key observation leads to GFP that not only reduces the domain shifts but also compatible with typical DA methods. The GFPs are conducted on both source and target domain by unsupervised manner, including polarimetric basis extraction, the Wishart clustering, histogram statistics, and dimensionality reduction. After these transformations, the unlabeled target PolSAR image can be classified based on obtained GFP, DA, and limited labeled samples only from the source domain. Extensive unsupervised cross-domain experiments on 27 scenarios verified that GFP leads to at most 93.76% accuracy for full- and dual-polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images’ classification. Moreover, the GFP shed light on extensive cross-domain PolSAR applications about built-up areas, vegetation, and bare land analysis.