Kernel sparse representation for hyperspectral unmixing based on high mutual coherence spectral library

Sparse regression is now a popular method for hyperspectral unmixing relying on a prior spectral library. However, it is limited by the high mutual coherence spectral library which contains high similarity atoms. In order to improve the accuracy of sparse unmixing with a high mutual coherence spectral library, a new algorithm based on kernel sparse representation unmixing model with total variation constraint is proposed in this paper. By constructing an appropriate kernel function to expand similarity measure scale, library atoms and hyperspectral data are mapped to kernel space where sparse regression algorithms are then applied. Experiments conducted with both simulated and real hyperspectral data sets indicate that the proposed algorithm effectively improves the unmixing performance when using a high mutual coherence spectral library because of its ability to precisely extract endmembers in hyperspectral images. Compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithm obtains low reconstruction errors in pixels with different mixed degree.