ACDR-CRAFF Net: A Multi-Scale Network Based on Adaptive Channel and Coordinate Relational Attention Network for Remote Sensing Scene Classification

Abstract

Accurate classification of remote sensing scene images is crucial for diverse applications, from environmental monitoring to urban planning. While convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have dramatically improved classification accuracy, challenges remain due to the complex distribution of small objects, varied spatial configurations, and intra-class multimodality in remote sensing images. In this work, we make three key contributions to address these challenges. (1) We propose the adaptive channel and coordinate relational attention network (ACDR-CRAFF), a novel multi-scale feature fusion framework designed to enhance feature representation across scales. (2) We introduce two innovative modules: the adaptive channel dimensionality reduction (ACDR) module, which dynamically adjusts channel representations to retain essential low-dimensional features, and the coordinate relational attention multi-scale feature fusion (CRAFF) module, which effectively captures and transfers spatial information between feature levels. (3) By integrating ACDR and CRAFF, our model achieves a progressive fusion of local to global features, ensuring robust feature expressiveness at multiple scales. Experimental results on four widely used benchmark datasets demonstrate that ACDR-CRAFF consistently outperforms several state-of-the-art methods, achieving significant improvements in classification accuracy and setting a new benchmark for complex remote sensing scene classification tasks. These results underscore the effectiveness of our approach in addressing the limitations of existing methods and advancing the state of the art in remote sensing image analysis.