Study of synthetic aperture radar and automatic identification system for ship target detection

摘要

In the past, the main goals of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems were the study of the interaction of electromagnetic waves with the earth surface. Recently, the development of multi-channel SAR systems has enabled the development of more sophisticated techniques for the surveillance activities. SAR is the most efficient instrument, which provides high-resolution data for wide ocean area surveillance under all weather conditions. The intrinsic capability of this instrument is to provide a quick view of the oceanic surface features such as vessels, waves and currents, oil spills, laver facilities and wind fields. The ship detection or recognition is achieved in two steps: the first step is to identify the target in SAR images of a busy traffic, which corresponds to Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals by the “dead-reckoning (DR) position”, and the second step is to estimate the position, size and speed of the ship from SAR images and compare these results with the AIS “true” data. This paper presents the fundamentals of SAR and its integration with the AIS data for the ship target detection.