Spatial resolution matching of microwave radiometer data with convolutional neural network

Passive multi-frequency microwave remote sensing is often plagued with the problems of low- and non-uniform spatial resolution. In order to adaptively enhance and match the spatial resolution, an accommodative spatial resolution matching (ASRM) framework, composed of the flexible degradation model, the deep residual convolutional neural network (CNN), and the adaptive feature modification (AdaFM) layers, is proposed in this paper. More specifically, a flexible degradation model, based on the imaging process of the microwave radiometer, is firstly proposed to generate suitable datasets for various levels of matching tasks. Secondly, a deep residual CNN is introduced to jointly learn the complicated degradation factors of the data, so that the resolution can be matched up to fixed levels with state of the art quality. Finally, the AdaFM layers are added to the network in order to handle arbitrary and continuous resolution matching problems between a start and an end level. Both the simulated and the microwave radiation imager (MWRI) data from the Fengyun-3C (FY-3C) satellite have been used to demonstrate the validity and the effectiveness of the method.