Application of a Hybrid Model Based on a Convolutional Auto-Encoder and Convolutional Neural Network in Object-Oriented Remote Sensing Classification

Variation in the format and classification requirements for remote sensing data makes establishing a standard remote sensing sample dataset difficult. As a result, few remote sensing deep neural network models have been widely accepted. We propose a hybrid deep neural network model based on a convolutional auto-encoder and a complementary convolutional neural network to solve this problem. The convolutional auto-encoder supports feature extraction and data dimension reduction of remote sensing data. The extracted features are input into the convolutional neural network and subsequently classified. Experimental results show that in the proposed model, the classification accuracy increases from 0.916 to 0.944, compared to a traditional convolutional neural network model; furthermore, the number of training runs is reduced from 40,000 to 22,000, and the number of labelled samples can be reduced by more than half, all while ensuring a classification accuracy of no less than 0.9, which suggests the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed model.