Toward an Integrated Ship Detection and Identification System by Incorporating Spaceborne ALOS-PALSAR, Ground-Based Maritime Radar and AIS

摘要

The purpose of this study is to incorporate the Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) on board of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) with the ground-based maritime radar including AIS, in order to develop an integrated ship detection and identification system. For this purpose, we first tested the ability of PALSAR in the Tosa Bay in Kochi, Japan in 2006, to extract small fishing boats cruising in the range direction, whose lengths were in the range between 8 m and 15 m. The ground-range resolution cells of PALSAR were of the order of 7-27 m. We could extract these boats embedded in sea clutter under certain conditions by using MLCC (Multi-Look Cross-Correlation), CCF (Cross-Correlation Function) of HH- and HV-polarization amplitudes, and obtained high SNR (Signal to background Noise Ratio) via adaptive Weibull-CFAR. A new set of data were used for the present study to examine the possibility of detecting and identifying unregistered ships, using the maritime X-band radar and AIS in the Tokyo Bay in 2008. The preliminary results indicate a promise for a new integrated system for ship detection and identification with an extended ability of estimating cruising speed and direction of ships.