Generating Virtual Training Labels for Crop Classification from Fused Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Time Series

Abstract Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown results superior to most traditional image understanding approaches in many fields, incl. crop classification from satellite time series images. However, CNNs require a large number of training samples to properly train the network. The process of collecting and labeling such samples using traditional methods can be both, time-consuming and costly. To address this issue and improve classification accuracy, generating virtual training labels (VTL) from existing ones is a promising solution. To this end, this study proposes a novel method for generating VTL based on sub-dividing the training samples of each crop using self-organizing maps (SOM), and then assigning labels to a set of unlabeled pixels based on the distance to these sub-classes. We apply the new method to crop classification from Sentinel images. A three-dimensional (3D) CNN is utilized for extracting features from the fusion of optical and radar time series. The results of the evaluation show that the proposed method is effective in generating VTL, as demonstrated by the achieved overall accuracy (OA) of 95.3% and kappa coefficient (KC) of 94.5%, compared to 91.3% and 89.9% for a solution without VTL. The results suggest that the proposed method has the potential to enhance the classification accuracy of crops using VTL.