A Review on SAR Image and its Despeckling

• Published in: Archives of computational methods in engineering 2021-12, Vol.28 (7), p.4633-4653
• Main Authors: Singh, Prabhishek, Diwakar, Manoj, Shankar, Achyut, Shree, Raj, Kumar, Manoj
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Engineering; Image quality; Mathematical and Computational Engineering; Noise; Norms; Original Paper; Radar imaging; Synthetic aperture radar
• ISSN: 1134-3060; 1886-1784
• DOI: 10.1007/s11831-021-09548-z

The method of speckle reduction is widely used in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery over the last three decades. The SAR images are inherently speckled in nature. Speckle noise is a granular pattern distribution, usually modeled as a multiplicative noise that affects the SAR images, as well as all coherent images. Other SAR related problems are also discussed in this paper. Therefore, despeckling approaches are needed to improve the quality of SAR images. However, there is a trade-off between speckle reduction and the preservation of fine details in the despeckled SAR image. The reduction of the speckle noise without losing the fine details of the SAR image is a diffucult task. However, many despeckling methods have been discussed to reduce the speckle noise from the SAR images. Each method has their own norms, advantages and disadvantages. This article contains a review of some major work in the field of SAR image despeckling. Often, scientists and scholars have faced the struggle to understand the pattern distribution of the speckle noise in SAR images. Hence, a brief details about radar, SAR imaging, speckle noise in SAR images and the prevalent approaches of SAR image despeckling are reviewed here. The advantages and disadvantages of SAR image despeckling approaches are also analysed and discussed.