Vast marine area possesses over 3/4 of the global surface, where human activities occur more and more. Over 90% of imported crude oil in China is transported by oil tankers, which comprise the main part of vessel fleets in the China seas. Fishery is another human activity in the oceans, which is related to resource management and EEZ protection. Both maritime traffic and fishery law enforcement need an efficient monitoring technology over vast ocean surface, while vessel detection and recognition are the primary requirement in the maritime monitoring. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has shown its capability to detect vessels in the ocean since the launch of SAR satellites (C. Liu and P.W. Vachon, 2004). With the hi-resolution SAR satellites launched during the last 3 years, it becomes possible to reveal more ship features in the SAR images and classify various ships (H. Greidanus and N. Kourti, 2006, G. Margarit, et al., 2006).
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