SSGAN: Cloud removal in satellite images using spatiospectral generative adversarial network

Satellite data’s reliability, uniformity, and global scanning capabilities have revolutionized agricultural monitoring and crop management. However, the presence of clouds in satellite images can obscure useful information, rendering them difficult to infer. Aiming at the problem of cloud cover, this study presents a SpatioSpectral Generative Adversarial Network (SSGAN) approach for effectively eliminating cloud cover from multispectral satellite images. It utilizes the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images as complementary information with the optical images from the Sentinel-2 satellite. The proposed model exploits feature extraction by sub-grouping the 13 channels of Sentinel-2 images based on their electromagnetic wavelength. Experimentally, we demonstrated that the proposed SSGAN model surpasses conventional and state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods and can reconstruct regions obscured by clouds. The subgrouping optimized the utilization of sensor information and improved the performance metrics for reconstructed images. Compared to the state-of-the-art (SOTA) approach, the SSGAN model demonstrates higher performance, achieving a mPSNR of 32.771, mSSIM of 0.880, and correlation coefficient (CC) of 0.889. The SSGAN model was further evaluated under varying conditions, including scenarios without the inclusion of SAR data, where it achieved a mPSNR of 26.825, mSSIM of 0.726, and CC of 0.615. Adding SAR images into the model significantly enhanced its performance, resulting in a mPSNR of 29.932, mSSIM of 0.857, and CC of 0.735. These results indicate that higher mPSNR, mSSIM, and CC values correspond to better image reconstruction quality. Our method enhances the usability of satellite data for crop mapping, crop health monitoring, and crop yield prediction. • A novel SpatioSpectral Generative Adversarial Network (SSGAN) is proposed to generate cloud-free satellite images. • Sentinel-2 image bands are partitioned into 3 subgroups according to their electromagnetic wavelength. • Extracted deep features effectively remove the clouds from images and help to improve the effectiveness of crop management.