RN-YOLO: A Small Target Detection Model for Aerial Remote-Sensing Images

Abstract

Accurately detecting targets in remote-sensing images is crucial for the military, urban planning, and resource exploration. There are some challenges in extracting detailed features from remote-sensing images, such as complex backgrounds, large-scale variations, and numerous small targets. This paper proposes a remote-sensing target detection model called RN-YOLO (YOLO with RepGhost and NAM), which integrates RepGhost and a normalization-based attention module (NAM) based on YOLOv8. Firstly, NAM is added to the feature extraction network to enhance the capture capabilities for small targets by recalibrating receptive fields and strengthening information flow. Secondly, an efficient RepGhost_C2f structure is employed in the feature fusion network to replace the C2f module, effectively reducing the parameters. Lastly, the WIoU (Wise Intersection over Union) loss function is adopted to mitigate issues such as significant variations in target sizes and difficulty locating small targets, effectively improving the localization accuracy of small targets. The experimental results demonstrate that compared to the YOLOv8s model, the RN-YOLO model reduces the parameter count by 13.9%. Moreover, on the DOTAv1.5, TGRS-HRRSD, and RSOD datasets, the detection accuracy (mAP@.5:.95) of the RN-YOLO model improves by 3.6%, 1.2%, and 2%, respectively, compared to the YOLOv8s model, showcasing its outstanding performance and enhanced capability in detecting small targets.