A Leading but Simple Classification Method for Remote Sensing Images

Recently, researchers have proposed a lot of deep convolutional neural network (CNN) approaches with obvious flaws to tackle the difficult semantic classification (SC) task of remote sensing images (RSI). In this paper, the author proposes a simple method that aims to provide a leading but efficient solution by using a lightweight EfficientNet-B0. First, this paper concluded the drawbacks with an analysis of mathematical theory and then proposed a qualitative conclusion on the previous methods’ theoretical performance based on theoretical derivation and experiments. Following that, the paper designs a novel method named LS-EfficientNet, consisting only of a single CNN and a concise training algorithm called SC-CNN. Far different from previous complex and hardware-extensive ones, the proposed method mainly focuses on tackling the long-neglected problems, including overfitting, data distribution shift by DA, improper use of training tricks, and other incorrect operations on a pre-trained CNN. Compared to previous studies, the proposed method is easy to reproduce because all the models, training tricks, and hyperparameter settings are open-sourced. Extensive experiments on two benchmark datasets show that the proposed method can easily surpass all the previous state-of-the-art ones, with an outstanding accuracy lead of 0.5% to 1.2% and a remarkable parameter decrease of 78% if compared to the best prior one in 2022. In addition, ablation test results also prove that the proposed effective combination of training tricks, including OLS and CutMix, can clearly boost a CNN's performance for RSI-SC, with an increase in accuracy of 1.0%. All the results reveal that a single lightweight CNN can well tackle the routine task of classifying RSI.