Vessel monitoring in the North Sea and Baltic Sea areas based on dual-polarization SAR images and AIS data

摘要

SAR images occupy a privileged place in vessel monitoring due to their quasi all-weather and day/night observation capability. The Sentinel-1 C-band SAR sensor acquires systematically images over areas of maritime interests and presents several assets such as the open access policy data or the availability of complex dual polarization data. New SAR-based vessel detection algorithms using dual-polarimetric features are an area of growing scientific research. In this paper, we make use of the complex coherence between the dual polarimetric channels in order to detect vessels. In addition, a method that allows to delineate the coastline from the SAR data is also proposed. For the experimental results, we will focus on Sentinel-1 Interferometric Wide Swath imagery with a resolution of 20m, acquired over the North Sea and Baltic Sea areas.