ProSR: Semantic-Prototype-Guided Discrete Modeling for Physically Consistent SAR Super-Resolution
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
High-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery is critical for precision analysis such as automatic target recognition, yet its acquisition is costly. Although generative image super-resolution (ISR) models offer a promising alternative, current smooth-approximation based diffusion frameworks often struggle to preserve the coherent scattering statistics, causing stochastic structural distortions that are less consistent with real SAR physics. To address this, we propose Semantic Prototype-Guided Super-Resolution (ProSR), reformulating SAR ISR as a semantically-guided discrete token prediction task within a quantized latent space. By mapping signal features to discrete scattering primitives, ProSR preserves the impulsive nature of SAR without over-smoothing. Furthermore, we integrate a Self-Supervised Learning backbone into SAR ISR to extract label-free semantic priors, overcoming label scarcity. Guided by these priors, we introduce Semantic-Aligned Detail Encoding to decouple high-frequency signals into discrete scattering primitives. In parallel, the Semantic Prototype Map Generator explicitly constructs semantic prototype maps, allowing Prototype-Map-Guided Attention to route the information flows within identical categories and mitigate inter-class interference. To validate our approach, we present a large-scale 0.25m resolution benchmark from the Umbra Open Dataset. Experimental results show ProSR achieves superior visual quality while preserving essential scattering characteristics required for practical SAR applications.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 52 of its 74 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2026.
Builds on
52 of 74 references.
References · 52
- 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
- 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 30,186
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 21,076
- 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,305
- 2021High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Modelscited by 18,863
- 2020A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representationscited by 12,049
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,177
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Implicit Modelscited by 9,781
- 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
- 2019Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learningcited by 7,513
- 2021Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learnerscited by 7,403
- 2015Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamicscited by 7,058
38 more
- 2021Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformerscited by 6,968
- 2016SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restartscited by 5,045
- 2017Neural Discrete Representation Learningcited by 4,712
- 2020Taming Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesiscited by 3,253
- 2016Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-Softmaxcited by 2,739
- 2016Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 1,908
- 2021SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformercited by 1,887
- 2021Structured Denoising Diffusion Models in Discrete State-Spacescited by 1,719
- 2017Enhanced Deep Residual Networks for Single Image Super-Resolutioncited by 1,552
- 2021Image Super-Resolution via Iterative Refinementcited by 1,511
- 2018Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Residual Channel Attention Networkscited by 1,264
- 2018ESRGAN: Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 1,254
- 2014Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networkscited by 1,224
- 2022MaskGIT: Masked Generative Image Transformercited by 1,099
- 2015Accurate Image Super-Resolution Using Very Deep Convolutional Networkscited by 903
- 2020Image Quality Assessment: Unifying Structure and Texture Similaritycited by 811
- 2023Muse: Text-To-Image Generation via Masked Generative Transformerscited by 648
- 2023Exploiting Diffusion Prior for Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 489
- 2020Reliable Fidelity and Diversity Metrics for Generative Modelscited by 434
- 2021SRDiff: Single Image Super-Resolution with Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 415
- 2021Conditional Positional Encodings for Vision Transformerscited by 406
- 2023ResShift: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Super-resolution by Residual Shiftingcited by 365
- 2016From Softmax to Sparsemax: A Sparse Model of Attention and Multi-Label Classificationcited by 341
- 2023SeeSR: Towards Semantics-Aware Real-World Image Super-Resolutioncited by 315
- 2020Structure-Preserving Super Resolution with Gradient Guidancecited by 116
- 2024Understanding Hallucinations in Diffusion Models through Mode Interpolationcited by 91
- 2016A Haar Wavelet-Based Perceptual Similarity Index for Image Quality Assessmentcited by 57
- 2025AlignTok: Aligning Visual Foundation Encoders to Tokenizers for Diffusion Modelscited by 36
- 2025Uncertainty-guided Perturbation for Image Super-Resolution Diffusion Modelcited by 29
- 2024SARATR-X: Toward Building A Foundation Model for SAR Target Recognitioncited by 25
- 2021As if by magic: self-supervised training of deep despeckling networks with MERLINcited by 18
- 2024Semantic Segmentation Prior for Diffusion-Based Real-World Super-Resolutioncited by 8
- 2024A Comprehensive Survey on Self-Supervised Learning for Recommendationcited by 6
- 2025Fifty Years of SAR Automatic Target Recognition: The Road Forwardcited by 6
- 2020On Solving SAR Imaging Inverse Problems Using Non-Convex Regularization with a Cauchy-based Penaltycited by 3
- 2024SAFE: a SAR Feature Extractor based on self-supervised learning and masked Siamese ViTscited by 3
- 2025Semantic-Guided Diffusion Model for Single-Step Image Super-Resolutioncited by 3
- 2025Quantitative Comparison of Fine-Tuning Techniques for Pretrained Latent Diffusion Models in the Generation of Unseen SAR Imagescited by 3
50 most cited of 52 All 52 (JSON)
Built on by
Not cited yet.
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026OSCAR: Optical-aware Semantic Control for Aleatoric Refinement in Sar-to-Optical Translation
- 2026Better with Less: Tackling Heterogeneous Multi-Modal Image Joint Pretraining via Conditioned and Degraded Masked Autoencoder
- 2024Semantic Guided Large Scale Factor Remote Sensing Image Super-resolution with Generative Diffusion Prior
- 2024SAR to Optical Image Translation with Color Supervised Diffusion Model
- 2025From Spaceborne to Airborne: SAR Image Synthesis Using Foundation Models for Multi-Scale Adaptation
- 2025SARVLM: A Vision Language Foundation Model for Semantic Understanding in SAR Imagery
- 2026SAMBA: A Scatter-Guided Masked Bidirectional Mamba Foundation Model for SAR Target Recognition
- 2026ReFlowSET: Representation-Aligned Latent Flow Matching for SAR-to-EO Image Translation