Feature Extraction and Fusion for Land-Cover Discrimination with Multi-Temporal SAR Data

To improve the accuracy of land-cover discrimination in SAR data classification, this paper presents a methodology that includes feature extraction and fusion steps with multi-temporal SAR data. Three features including average backscattering coefficient, temporal variability and coherence are extracted from multi-temporal SAR data by considering the temporal behaviors of backscattering characteristics of SAR sensors. Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence(D-S theory) and fuzzy logic are applied to effectively integrate those features. Especially, a feature-driven heuristic approach to mass function assignment in D-S theory is applied and various fuzzy combination operators are tested in fuzzy logic fusion. As experimental results on a multi-temporal Radarsat-1 data set, the features considered in this paper could provide complementary information and thus effectively discriminated water, paddy and urban areas. However, it was difficult to discriminate forest and dry fields. From an information fusion methodological point of view, the D-S theory and fuzzy combination operators except the fuzzy Max and Algebraic Sum operators showed similar land-cover accuracy statistics.