A Study for Design of Lightweight Dense Connection Network on Hyperspectral Image Classification

The characteristics of hyperspectral remote sensing images such as inconspicuous feature representativeness, single feature level, and complex information content, can lead to unstable classification results. We propose a lightweight dense network model that injects channel attention in the form of dense connections between network layers (DSE-DN) for the classification of hyperspectral images. In the DSE-DN network, principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to reduce redundancy in the hyperspectral images. Subsequently, a densely connected network is constructed, incorporating channel attention mechanisms through dense connections to enhance the analysis of spectral image features. Finally, the processed hyperspectral images are classified using a fully interconnected layer. We assess two classical hyperspectral datasets and construct 2DCNN, 3DCNN, ResNet, and the network that injects channel attention layer by layer to compare with DSE-DN. The experimental results indicate the utility of the DSE-DN network in hyperspectral image classification and its superiority over other networks.