Ship Detection Using TerraSAR-X Images in the Campos Basin (Brazil)

The very large extent of the Brazilian coast (~8000 km) and the growing maritime vessel traffic demand that research be made on ancillary methods to monitor and control ship's traffic in national waters. An important tool for this purpose is the use of orbital synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ima...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters 2010-07, Vol.7 (3), p.545-548
Main Authors: Paes, R L, Lorenzzetti, J A, Gherardi, D F M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Clouds
Clutter
Constant false alarm rate (CFAR)
estimation
Image resolution
Interference
K-distribution
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
Marine vehicles
Monitoring
Oceans
Polarization
Radar detection
ship detection
Ships
Synthetic aperture radar
TerraSAR-X (TSX)
Traffic engineering
Traffic flow
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Summary:The very large extent of the Brazilian coast (~8000 km) and the growing maritime vessel traffic demand that research be made on ancillary methods to monitor and control ship's traffic in national waters. An important tool for this purpose is the use of orbital synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, particularly due to its ability to work day and night and to suffer almost no interference of cloud coverage. In this letter, we investigate some ship detection concepts, as applied to TerraSAR-X (TSX) ScanSAR images (16-m resolution), in VV and HH polarization. Ocean clutter statistical parameters are estimated, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is used to verify the goodness of fit for the K-distribution to TSX images. A constant false alarm rate (CFAR) target detection algorithm is developed, and its performance is verified. Incidence angle, CFAR's window size, and probability of false alarm influence are further analyzed.
ISSN:1545-598X
1558-0571
DOI:10.1109/LGRS.2010.2041322