Ship Detection in Ice-Infested Waters Based on Dual-Polarization SAR Imagery

摘要

This letter discusses the potential of automatic ship detection in ice-infested waters based on satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. The popular $K$ -distribution is used to model the backscatter statistics of sea ice clutter. The goodness of fit of this model is assessed with the Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Anderson–Darling test statistics for both VV and VH polarizations. We also test the impact of introducing the Method of Log Cumulant (MoLC) estimator for the shape parameter of the $K$-distribution. Finally, a constant false-alarm rate ship detection algorithm, applying the $K$ -distribution with the MoLC estimator, is evaluated on dual-polarization RADARSAT-2 SAR data. Our results demonstrate that this is a viable approach to ship detection in ice-infested waters.