Application of wavelet support vector regression on SAR data de-noising

A new filtering method for SAR data de-noising using wavelet support vector regression (WSVR) is developed. On the basis of the grey scale distribution character of SAR imagery, the logarithmic SAR image as a noise polluted signal is taken and the noise model assumption in logarithmic domain with Gaussian noise and impact noise is proposed. Based on the better performance of support vector regression (SVR) for complex signal approximation and the wavelet for signal detail expression, the wavelet kernel function is chosen as support vector kernel function. Then the logarithmic SAR image is regressed with WSVR. Furthermore the regression distance is used as a judgment index of the noise type. According to the judgment of noise type every pixel can be adaptively de-noised with different filters. Through an approximation experiment for a one-dimensional complex signal, the feasibility of SAR data regression based on WSVR is confirmed. Afterward the SAR image is treated as a two-dimensional continuous signal and filtered by an SVR with wavelet kernel function. The results show that the method proposed here reduces the radar speckle noise effectively while maintaining edge features and details well.