Inversion of Rough Surface Parameters from SAR Images Using Simulation-Trained Convolutional Neural Networks

This letter investigates the inversion of rough surface parameters (the root mean square height and the correlation length) from microwave images by using deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Training data for the deep CNN are simulated numerically using computational electromagnetic method. As CNN is powerful in extracting image features, scattering field from rough surfaces is first converted to microwave images via interpolated fast Fourier transform and then fed into the CNN. In order to reduce overfitting, the regularization technique and dropout layer are used. The proposed CNN consists of five pairs of convolutional and maxpooling layers and two additional convolution layers for feature extraction and two fully connected layers for parameter regression. The experimental results demonstrated the feasibility using deep neural networks for the parameter inversion of rough surface from electromagnetic scattering fields. It suggests potential application of CNN for rough surface parameter inversion from microwave sensing data.