Multi-Module Collaborative Optimization for SAR Image Aircraft Recognition: The SAR-YOLOv8l-ADE Network

As a core node of the air transportation network, airports rely on aircraft model identification as a key link to support the development of smart aviation. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with its strong-penetration imaging capabilities, provides high-quality data support for this task. However, the field of SAR image interpretation faces numerous challenges. To address the core challenges in SAR image-based aircraft recognition, including insufficient dataset samples, single-dimensional target features, significant variations in target sizes, and high missed-detection rates for small targets, this study proposed an improved network architecture, SAR-YOLOv8l-ADE. Four modules achieve collaborative optimization: SAR-ACGAN integrates a self-attention mechanism to expand the dataset; SAR-DFE, a parameter-learnable dual-residual module, extracts multidimensional, detailed features; SAR-C2f, a residual module with multi-receptive field fusion, adapts to multi-scale targets; and 4SDC, a four-branch module with adaptive weights, enhances small-target recognition. Experimental results on the fused dataset SAR-Aircraft-EXT show that the mAP50 of the SAR-YOLOv8l-ADE network is 6.1% higher than that of the baseline network YOLOv8l, reaching 96.5%. Notably, its recognition accuracy for small aircraft targets shows a greater improvement, reaching 95.2%. The proposed network outperforms existing methods in terms of recognition accuracy and generalization under complex scenarios, providing technical support for airport management and control, as well as for emergency rescue in smart aviation.