Ship-detection in SAR imagery using Low Pulse Repetition Frequency Radar

Conference: EUSAR 2014 - 10th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar
06/03/2014 - 06/05/2014 at Berlin, Germany

Proceedings: EUSAR 2014

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

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Authors:
Iervolino, Pasquale; Guida, Raffaella (Surrey Space Centre – University of Surrey, UK)
Cohen, Martin (EADS Astrium Ltd, UK)
Whittaker, Philip (SSTL Ltd, UK)

Abstract:
The paper introduces a novel approach for ship-detection and ambiguity removal in images acquired from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) operating in Low Pulse Repetition Frequency (LPRF) mode. The procedure consists of four steps. In the detection step, the bright clusters of pixels representative of the ships are isolated using a Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) algorithm; in the maximum selection step a pixel maximum in amplitude is chosen for each cluster; in the third step the isolated pixels are interpolated and, finally, the stationary point of the curve, corresponding to the actual position of the target, is computed. The algorithm is tested on an airborne S-band SAR image of the Solent in the United Kingdom.